title: Highly efficient single-junction GaAs thin-film solar cell on flexible substrate.
abstract: There has been much interest in developing a thin-film solar cell because it is lightweight and flexible. The GaAs thin-film solar cell is a top contender in the thin-film solar cell market in that it has a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) compared to that of other thin-film solar cells. There are two common structures for the GaAs solar cell: n (emitter)-on-p (base) and p-on-n. The former performs better due to its high collection efficiency because the electron diffusion length of the p-type base region is much longer than the hole diffusion length of the n-type base region. However, it has been limited to fabricate highly efficient n-on-p single-junction GaAs thin film solar cell on a flexible substrate due to technical obstacles. We investigated a simple and fast epitaxial lift-off (ELO) method that uses a stress originating from a Cr/Au bilayer on a 125-μm-thick flexible substrate. A metal combination of AuBe/Pt/Au is employed as a new p-type ohmic contact with which an n-on-p single-junction GaAs thin-film solar cell on flexible substrate was successfully fabricated. The PCE of the fabricated single-junction GaAs thin-film solar cells reached 22.08% under air mass 1.5 global illumination.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 443-749, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Sunghyun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Moon
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 443-749, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Kangho
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 443-749, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Youngjo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 443-749, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Junseok
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Heo
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 443-749, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jaejin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lee