Light-trapping enhanced thin-film III-V quantum dot solar cells fabricated by epitaxial lift-off

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that light-trapping techniques and epitaxial lift-off can significantly enhance the efficiency of thin-film III-V quantum dot solar cells, with potential efficiencies exceeding 28% under standard conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel epitaxial lift-off fabrication process combined with micro-patterned diffraction gratings to improve light absorption and efficiency in quantum dot solar cells.

Findings

Twofold increase in photocurrent with ELO fabrication

Over tenfold enhancement of near-infrared light harvesting

Potential efficiency surpassing 28% with optimized light trapping

Abstract

We report thin-film InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) solar cells with $n-i-p{+}$ deep junction structure and planar back reflector fabricated by epitaxial lift-off (ELO) of full 3-inch wafers. External quantum efficiency measurements demonstrate twofold enhancement of the QD photocurrent in the ELO QD cell compared to the wafer-based QD cell. In the GaAs wavelength range, the ELO QD cell perfectly preserves the current collection efficiency of the baseline single-junction ELO cell. We demonstrate by full-wave optical simulations that integrating a micro-patterned diffraction grating in the ELO cell rearside provides more than tenfold enhancement of the near-infrared light harvesting by QDs. Experimental results are thoroughly discussed with the help of physics-based simulations to single out the impact of QD dynamics and defects on the cell photovoltaic behavior. It is demonstrated that non radiative recombination in the QD stack is the bottleneck for the open circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$) of the reported devices. More important, our theoretical calculations demonstrate that the $V_{oc}$ offest of 0.3 V from the QD ground state identified by \emph{Tanabe et al., 2012}, from a collection of experimental data of high quality III-V QD solar cells is a reliable - albeit conservative - metric to gauge the attainable $V_{oc}$ and to quantify the scope for improvement by reducing non radiative recombination. Provided that material quality issues are solved, we demonstrate - by transport and rigorous electromagnetic simulations - that light-trapping enhanced thin-film cells with twenty InAs/GaAs QD layers reach efficiency higher than 28\% under unconcentrated light, ambient temperature. If photon recycling can be fully exploited, 30\% efficiency is deemed to be feasible.