Abstract
This paper reports an epitaxial lift-off (ELO) method that uses water-soluble MgTe to obtain free-standing single-crystal CdTe/MgCdTe double-heterostructure (DH) thin films from samples grown monolithically on lattice-matched InSb substrates. Photoluminescence measurements on as-grown and free-standing films reveal that the optical quality of the DH survives ELO. This method potentially enables substantial increases in the conversion efficiencies of thin-film solar cells through enhancement of the photon-recycling effect. This process holds promise in multijunction PV applications that considers the integration of a 1.7-eV MgCdTe top cell and a crystalline Si bottom cell to form a tandem device with efficiency potentially higher than 30%. Additionally, the method can be applied to other families of devices, such as infrared photodetectors.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 8795510 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1834-1838 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2019 |
Keywords
- Cadmium compounds
- II-VI semiconductor materials
- epitaxial layers
- flexible electronics
- luminescence
- optical microscopy
- thin films
- x-ray diffraction (XRD)
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering