While photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing is on track to provide a substantial portion of world electricity generation, the growth of the industry is likely to be lower than desired to meet targets designed to mitigate climate change. Many different PV technologies have been developed, but PV modules based on Si are the dominant technology due to its low cost and relatively high energy conversion efficiencies. PV modules based on III-V materials are primarily used for aerospace applications due to their high cost and record-setting efficiencies. Traditional manufacturing techniques for III-V PV require expensive precursors, and have high capital costs and low throughput. Close-spaced vapor transport (CSVT) is an alternative technique for deposition of III-V materials that was invented in the 1960s but has not been fully developed for the production of PV devices. This work describes progress towards high efficiency solid-state GaAs solar cells produced by CSVT.
Previous results have demonstrated good electronic quality of CSVT GaAs using photoelectrochemical cells, but such devices have not been demonstrated to be commercially practical. This work investigates the potential of CSVT to produce high-efficiency III-V PV by fabricating and characterizing GaAs films and simple homojunction solar cells. Chapter I describes the motivation and state of III-V PV research, and establishes basic device physics background. Chapter II gives details of film growth and device design and fabrication. Chapter III gives an overview of the film and device characterization methods employed. Chapter IV explores the primary limitations in the efficiency of the homojunction solar cells fabricated for this study and discusses some practical concerns in translating the technique to a manufacturing environment. Chapter V explores the electronically-active defects in both $n$-type films and in $p$-type absorbers of solar cells, which would be likely to limit the efficiency of devices optimized considering the results presented in Chapter IV. Chapter VI discusses some of the possible future directions for applying CSVT to more advanced device structures which are more commercially relevant, including the growth on alternative substrates and growth of ternary materials for passivating layers or multijunction cells.
This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uoregon.edu/oai:scholarsbank.uoregon.edu:1794/22284 |
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Creators | Boucher, Jason |
| Contributors | Boettcher, Shannon |
| Publisher | University of Oregon |
| Source Sets | University of Oregon |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Rights | All Rights Reserved. |
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