InP Solar Cell Development on Inexpensive Si Substrates.

Abstract

Optimized emitter/base dopants-At this point in the program, emitter designs have been roughly optimized for both P/N and N/P cells. For P/N cells, the emitter formation and cell junction depth are determined by zinc diffusion from the InGaAs contact cap. Zinc is a P-type dopant in InP. When we attempted to define epitaxially grown emitters, these emitters, which had thickness on the order of 1000A, were dominated by zinc diffusing out of the InGaAs contact cap, which effectively set the emitter depth at about 3000A. It therefore made little difference whether the epitaxially grown emitter layer was 100 or 1000A, since the junction depth was fixed by the zinc diffusing out of the InGaAs to 3000A. Spire was able to improve the P/N cell performance by controlling the thickness of the InGaAs cap layer, the solid state diffusion source for the zinc, as well as the growth temperature. Best cell performance was with a 1000A InGaAs cap thickness with the entire cell grown at 650 deg C. jg p.1

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 22, 1995
Accession Number
ADA293255

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ballistic Missiles
  • Cells
  • Contractors
  • Contracts
  • Corporations
  • Department Of Defense
  • Diffusion
  • Intercellular Junctions
  • Military Research
  • Solar Cells
  • Substrates
  • Technical Information Centers
  • Temperature Control
  • Thickness

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Semiconductor Device Technology
  • Solar Photovoltaics and Thermoelectric Devices.