Direct-bonded four-junction GaAs solar cellsProject supported by the Shanghai Rising-Star Program (No. 14QB1402800)

• Published in: Journal of semiconductors Vol. 36; no. 6
• Main Authors: Shen, Jingman, Sun, Lijie, Chen, Kaijian, Zhang, Wei, Wang, Xunchun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chinese Institute of Electronics 01.06.2015
• Subjects: gallium arsenide; solar cell; wafer bonding
• ISSN: 1674-4926
• DOI: 10.1088/1674-4926/36/6/064012

Direct wafer bonding technology is able to integrate two smooth wafers and thus can be used in fabricating III-V multijunction solar cells with lattice mismatch. In order to monolithically interconnect between the GaInP/GaAs and InGaAsP/InGaAs subcells, the bonded GaAs/InP heterojunction must be a highly conductive ohmic junction or a tunnel junction. Three types of bonding interfaces were designed by tuning the conduction type and doping elements of GaAs and InP. The electrical properties of p-GaAs (Zn doped)/n-InP (Si doped), p-GaAs (C doped)/n-InP (Si doped) and n-GaAs (Si doped)/n-InP (Si doped) bonded heterojunctions were analyzed from the I-V characteristics. The wafer bonding process was investigated by improving the quality of the sample surface and optimizing the bonding parameters such as bonding temperature, bonding pressure, bonding time and so on. Finally, GaInP/GaAs/InGaAsP/InGaAs 4-junction solar cells have been prepared by a direct wafer bonding technique with the high efficiency of 34.14% at the AM0 condition (1 Sun).