Hot carrier solar cells hold the promise of efficiency significantly greater than that predicted by the Shockley–Queisser limit. Consequently, there has been considerable effort to create cells that achieve this goal, but so far, this has not been realized. There are many reasons for this. Here, the principles of the concept will be discussed along with some myths that hinder the future development of such devices. Also, a new approach to the hot carrier solar cell is described along with some recent experimental results that support such an approach.

Challenges, myths, and opportunities in hot carrier solar cells

Zinc-induced lattice contraction in metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy grown AlGaInP

Growth of carbon-doped LP-MOVPE InAlAs using non-gaseous sources

Effect of growth temperature on C-doped InAlAs layers grown by LP-MOVPE

An extensive photoreflectance (PR) and photoluminescence (PL) study is done on an undoped n-type and p-type InAlAs metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) grown layers on Fe-doped semi-insulating (SI)-InP substrates. A p-type doping with doping concentration of (1.57 × 1018 cm−3) at a growth temperature of 560 °C and V/III ratio of 50 is achieved. Photoluminescence (PL) spectra show a significant improvement in peak intensity of the type II transition for the Mg-doped InAlAs sample proving a better quality of the interface. Moreover, the abundant narrow satellite peaks of X-ray diffraction and the reciprocal space mapping recorded in the vicinity of (004) using high resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) demonstrate a good quality of interfaces. Besides, photoreflectance spectroscopy (PR) at room temperature is useful to experimentally establish the valence-band splitting, a band-gap energy of InP substrate and InAlAs layers. A good correlation between experimental results was obtained.

K. Tateno

Papers

Zn-doped AlInAs grown at high temperature by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition