Recent development of energy conversion devices namely photovoltaic (PV) cells or solar cells and thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells require the use of bulk germanium as substrate material for efficient devices performance. Germanium is preferred to be employed in solidstate structure of terrestrial or space energy conversion devices due to its excellent electrical properties. With bandgap of 0.66 e V energy from infrared region of solar or thermal spectrum can be absorbed and converted into electrical energy. At present, multi-junction solar cells show the highest performance with bulk germanium as substrate material.' but have complicated and expensive manufacture processes. The major contributor to the high cells cost is the substrate material, germanium, which is an expensive and scarce material. One of the possibilities to resolve these issues is by using thin film instead of thick bulk germanium. To date, development of thin film germanium for energy conversion devices has not been established. By providing germanium on insulator structures a good quality thin film germanium can be attained and thus, offer a low cost route. The rapid melt growth (RMG) technique has been proposed, where it could potentially produces thin film germanium with quality similar to that of bulk germanium. In the existing technology via the RMG process germanium thickness was limited to 100 run. For photovoltaic applications thicker germanium films are required to have more energy absorption, thus leads to efficient performance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:677964 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Zainal, Nurfarina |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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