Presentation Details
Spalled (211) GaAs Substrates for Cost-Efficient III–V Photovoltaics

Dheemahi Rao1, Mario Dumont1, Anna K Braun2, Nicholas Yoo2, Tadeáš Hanuš1, Anica Neumann1, Theresa Saenz1, Corinne E.Packard3, John Simon1, Aaron J.Ptak1, Kevin L.Schulte1.

1National Laboratory of the Rockies, Golden, CO, USA.2Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA.3University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Abstract


The high costs of substrates and epitaxial growth present significant barriers to the scaling of III-V photovoltaics, despite their remarkable efficiencies. Combining methods for substrate recovery and reuse with a rapid epitaxial growth technique may significantly lower the manufacturing cost of III-V photovoltaics. In this work, we investigate controlled spalling of (211)B GaAs substrate orientation and epitaxial growth of GaAs devices on spalled (211)B wafers with high-growth-rate halide vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE). The choice of substrate orientation is critical because it must be compatible with spalling process, and suitable for high-performance epitaxial regrowth, and (211)B shows promise in both regards. An upright GaAs solar cell was fabricated on a spalled (211)B wafer with InGaP window layer that showed equally good performance as a reference cell deposited on un-spalled epi (211)B wafer with an open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 1.01V under AM1.5G spectrum. These results suggest that (211)B‑oriented GaAs is a promising platform for low-cost III-V photovoltaics manufacturing.

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