Ultra-Lightweight, Flexible InGaP/GaAs Tandem Solar Cells with a Dual-Function Encapsulation Layer

Kim, Tae Soo; Kim, Hyo Jin; Geum, Dae Myeong; Han, Jieun; Kim, In Soo; Hong, Namgi; Ryu, Geun Hwan; Kang, Jahyo; Choi, Won Jun

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c00006

Cited by 29 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Lightweight and flexible PVs are mostly vital for integration scheme with weight restrictions and curved surfaces such as in vehicles, greenhouses, wearable electronics and aerospace applications. [19,29,[196][197][198][199][200][201][202] While, stretchable SCs are relevant for wearable textile and portable devices. [41,[203][204][205] Furthermore, the size of PV devices can be adapted from upscaled integrated systems to miniature micro-cells.…”

Section: Further Tuning Capabilities Beyond Spectrum-sensitive Aspectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

Meddeb

Götz‐Köhler

Neugebohrn

et al. 2022

Advanced Energy Materials

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solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, to enable a steady mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, which are causing the planetary climate change and global warming. [5][6][7] Additionally, due to the economic development and the worldwide urbanization, a continuous rise of the global energy consumption across all key sectors, that is, power, heating, industry, and transport is occurring. This is expressed by an increase in the annual global electricity demand by 4.5% in 2021 corresponding to additional 1000 TWh. [4] Hence, strict criteria for the selection of competitive and abundant energy alternatives are imposed, requiring high yield at affordable prices. [8] The share of total renewables power generation excluding hydropower exceeded 3000 TWh in 2020, corresponding to almost 12% of the global electricity generation. [3] Considering an effective synergy between various sustainable energy candidates, solar photovoltaics (PV) have demonstrated great capabilities that can satisfy the requirements in the pathway towards 100% renewable electricity. [9][10][11][12] Owing to the research and development activities over the last decades, the power conversion efficiencies of solar cells (SC) have skyrocketed with a prolonged operation lifetime (>15 years) and a drastic plummeting in manufacturing costs (global average module selling price below $0.25 per W). [6,[13][14][15] The rapid universal deployment of PV resulted in a contribution of about 3.4% in the worldwide electricity generation in 2020. [3] Presently, the global installed PV capacity is approaching 1 TW and it is envisioned to reach ≈10 TW by 2030 and 30 to 70 TW by 2050. [16] Interestingly, along with massive electricity production using conventional solar power plants and rooftop solar panels, ancillary concepts of PV offer new strategies for supplying modern systems in versatile applications. [17][18][19] Moreover, diverse functionalities beyond solar energy harvesting can be afforded by adaptive PV, including aesthetic appearance, visual comfort and thermal management. [17,18,20,21] The distributed nature and the ubiquitous accessibility of multifunctional PV products are substantial features of solar PV in contrast to other renewable energies. However, traditional SCs dominating the market impose intrinsic optoelectronic and thermomechanical limitations, that prohibit their multifunctional utilization. To overcome these drawbacks, novel functional materials and innovative device architecture Solar photovoltaics (PV) offer viable and sustainable solutions to satisfy the growing energy demand and to meet the pressing climate targets. The deployment of conventional PV technologies is one of the major contributors of the ongoing energy transition in electricity power sector. However, the diversity of PV paradigms can open different opportunities for supplying modern systems in a wide range of terrestrial, marine, and aerospace applications. Such ubiquitous and versatile applications necessitate the development of PV technologies with customized desig...

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Section: Further Tuning Capabilities Beyond Spectrum-sensitive Aspectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

Meddeb

Götz‐Köhler

Neugebohrn

et al. 2022

Advanced Energy Materials

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“…Metal wafer bonding was conducted with a uniaxial pressure of approximately 40 kgf/cm 2 . After the bonding process, the GaAs epitaxial layer was separated from the Si donor substrate by an ELO process in which the AlAs sacrificial layer was etched by immersion in HF-based solution [29][30][31]. Finally, Pt/Ti/Pt/Au (20/30/20/200 nm) was deposited on the top contact layers by electron beam evaporation.…”

Section: Device Fabrication and Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Growth and Fabrication of GaAs Thin-Film Solar Cells on a Si Substrate via Hetero Epitaxial Lift-Off

et al. 2022

Self Cite

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We demonstrate, for the first time, GaAs thin film solar cells epitaxially grown on a Si substrate using a metal wafer bonding and epitaxial lift-off process. A relatively thin 2.1 μm GaAs buffer layer was first grown on Si as a virtual substrate, and a threading dislocation density of 1.8 × 107 cm−2 was achieved via two In0.1Ga0.9As strained insertion layers and 6× thermal cycle annealing. An inverted p-on-n GaAs solar cell structure grown on the GaAs/Si virtual substrate showed homogenous photoluminescence peak intensities throughout the 2″ wafer. We show a 10.6% efficient GaAs thin film solar cell without anti-reflection coatings and compare it to nominally identical upright structure solar cells grown on GaAs and Si. This work paves the way for large-scale and low-cost wafer-bonded III-V multi-junction solar cells.

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“…Thin, flexible multi‐junction solar cells with high efficiencies without irradiation, that is, Begin‐of‐Life (BOL), were already demonstrated by different research groups (e.g., Geisz et al 7 and Kim et al 8 ). Cardwell et al from Micro‐Link Devices presented a triple junction GaInP/GaAs/GaInAs solar cell with a BOL power‐to‐mass ratio >3 W/g under AM0 spectrum 9 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improvements in ultra‐light and flexible epitaxial lift‐off GaInP/GaAs/GaInAs solar cells for space applications

Schön

Bissels²,

Mulder³

et al. 2022

Progress in Photovoltaics

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A thin, lightweight, flexible solar cell is developed that maximizes the power-to-mass ratio under AM0 illumination and has a competitive efficiency after typical high energy electron irradiation. The inverted metamorphic triple junction (IMM3J) solar cells with Ga 0.51 In 0.49 P/GaAs/Ga 0.73 In 0.27 As subcells are grown on GaAs substrates and have a total epitaxy thickness of about 10 μm. After epitaxial growth, the inverted layer stack is metallized, with the metal serving as back-contact, back reflector and support layer for the ultra-thin solar cells before the GaAs substrate is separated by an epitaxial lift-off (ELO) process. The nondestructive nature of the ELO process makes multiple reuses of the GaAs substrate possible. The solar cell structure is optimized for maximum EOL efficiency, that is, after 1-MeV electron irradiation with a fluence of 1 Â 10 15 cm À2 , by means of simulations that include the irradiation induced defects in the various semiconductor alloys. Assuming realistic charge carrier lifetime in the materials, we predict a near-term efficiency potential for the IMM3J ELO of 30.9% under AM0 illumination before and 26.7% after irradiation. Several IMM3J ELO solar cells with an area of approximately 20 cm 2 from different development stages were tested under AM0 illumination. The newest solar cells (generation III) with a mass density of only 13.2 mg/cm 2 reach conversion efficiencies of 30.2% at 25 C. The resulting power-to-mass ratio of 3.0 W/g for the bare solar cell is one of the highest published ratios. After irradiation, a conversion efficiency of 25.4% was measured for "generation II" devices under AM0 illumination, which corresponds to a power-to-mass ratio of 2.6 W/g. IMM3J ELO solar cells from "generation I" were also tested for mechanical stability as "de-risking" test of this new cell technology. No degradation of the cell performance was found after dipping the cell in liquid N 2 and then heating up to 25 C for five times, despite of strong deformation of the flexible cell during the temperature cycle.

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Ultra-Lightweight, Flexible InGaP/GaAs Tandem Solar Cells with a Dual-Function Encapsulation Layer

Cited by 29 publications

References 41 publications

Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

Growth and Fabrication of GaAs Thin-Film Solar Cells on a Si Substrate via Hetero Epitaxial Lift-Off

Improvements in ultra‐light and flexible epitaxial lift‐off GaInP/GaAs/GaInAs solar cells for space applications

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