Degradation in Efficiency of InGaN/GaN Multiquantum Well Solar Cells With Rising Temperature

• Published in: IEEE transactions on electron devices Vol. 69; no. 11; pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: Shan, Hengsheng, Mei, Yun-Jian, Wang, Ning
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.11.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Chip formation; Degradation; Dislocation; Dislocation density; Edge dislocations; effect of temperature; Gallium nitrides; High temperature; Indium gallium nitrides; InGaN/GaN multiquantum well (MQW) solar cells; mode of mechanism of degradation; Multi Quantum Wells; Performance degradation; Photoelectricity; Photonic band gap; Photovoltaic cells; Plasma temperature; Quantum well devices; Radiative recombination; Solar cells; Temperature distribution; Two dimensional models
• ISSN: 0018-9383; 1557-9646
• DOI: 10.1109/TED.2022.3208081

In this article, the authors theoretically and experimentally investigate the mechanism of degradation of InGaN/GaN multi-quantum well (MQW) solar cells. InGaN/GaN MQW solar cells with chips of size 1 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\times</tex-math> </inline-formula> 1 mm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">^{\text{2}}</tex-math> </inline-formula> were fabricated and characterized within a range of temperature of 50 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">^{\circ}</tex-math> </inline-formula>C-250 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">^{\circ}</tex-math> </inline-formula>C to determine the effects of dislocations on their efficiency. The internal intensity of X-ray diffractions was used to construct a 2-D physical model of the density of edge dislocations in the InGaN/GaN MQW that was then simulated in Silvaco. The results show that the relative error in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\eta </tex-math> </inline-formula> between the simulation and the experiment was less than 5% over the examined range of temperature. This shows that an intensified number of nonradiative recombinations owing to high temperature contribute to edge dislocations that eventually degrade the performance of photoelectric devices. The work here provides a theoretical and experimental basis for the growth of high-quality InGaN materials to fabricate highly efficient solar cells.