Indium phosphide based solar cell using ultra-thin ZnO as an electron selective layer

Raj, Vidur, Sibele dos Santos, Tâmara, Rougieux, Fiacre, Vora, Kaushal, Lysevych, Mykhaylo, Fu, Lan, Mokkapati, Sudha ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3260-6560, Tan, Hark Hoe and Jagadish, Chennupati 2018. Indium phosphide based solar cell using ultra-thin ZnO as an electron selective layer. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 51 (39) , 395301. 10.1088/1361-6463/aad7e3

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Abstract

According to the Shockley–Queisser limit, the maximum achievable efficiency for a single junction solar cell is ~33.2% which corresponds to a bandgap (E g) of 1.35 eV (InP). However, the maximum reported efficiency for InP solar cells remain at 24.2%  ±  0.5%, that is  >25% below the standard Shockley–Queisser limit. Through a wide range of simulations, we propose a new device structure, ITO/ ZnO/i-InP/p+ InP (p-i-ZnO-ITO) which might be able to fill this efficiency gap. Our simulation shows that the use of a thin ZnO layer improves passivation of the underlying i-InP layer and provides electron selectivity leading to significantly higher efficiency when compared to their n+/i/p+ homojunction counterpart. As a proof-of-concept, we fabricated ITO/ZnO/i-InP solar cell on a p+ InP substrate and achieved an open-circuit voltage (V oc) and efficiency as high as 819 mV and 18.12%, respectively, along with ~90% internal quantum efficiency. The entire device fabrication process consists of four simple steps which are highly controllable and reproducible. This work lays the foundation for a new generation of thin film InP solar cells based solely on carrier selective heterojunctions without the requirement of extrinsic doping and can be particularly useful when p- and n-doping are challenging as in the case of III–V nanostructures.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	IOP Publishing
ISSN:	0022-3727
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	28 September 2018
Date of Acceptance:	3 August 2018
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 10:26
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/115335

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