Carrier dynamics in MOVPE-grown bulk dilute nitride materials for multi-junction solar cells

Yongkun Sin; Stephen LaLumondiere; Toby Garrod; Tae Wan Kim; Jeremy Kirch; Luke Mawst; William T. Lotshaw; Steven C. Moss

doi:10.1117/12.873894

21 February 2011 Carrier dynamics in MOVPE-grown bulk dilute nitride materials for multi-junction solar cells

Yongkun Sin, Stephen LaLumondiere, Toby Garrod, Tae Wan Kim, Jeremy Kirch, Luke Mawst, William T. Lotshaw, Steven C. Moss

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7933, Physics and Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices XIX; 79330H (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.873894
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2011, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Dilute nitride materials with a 1eV band-gap lattice matched to GaAs substrates are attractive for high-efficiency multi-junction solar cells. Carrier lifetime measurements are crucial in optimizing material growth and p-i-n field-aided carrier-extraction-device design. One research group has reported carrier lifetimes of MBE-grown bulk InGaNAsSb materials, but there has been no report of carrier lifetime measurements from bulk InGaNAsSb grown by MOVPE. In this study, we report the growth of bulk InGaNAsSb by MOVPE and the first carrier lifetime measurement from MOVPE-grown bulk InGaNAsSb materials with E_g= 1.0 - 1.2eV at 300K. We studied carrier dynamics in MOVPE-grown bulk dilute nitride materials nominally lattice matched to GaAs (100) substrates: 1μm thick In_0.035GaN_0.025As (E_g= 1.0eV at 300K) and ~0.2μm thick In_(0.05-0.07)GaN_(0.01-0.02)AsSb_(0.02-0.06) layers (E_g= 1.2eV at 300K). Both structures are fully strained. The incorporation of N in InGaNAs leads to degradation in photoluminescence efficiency, but prior studies indicate the addition of Sb in MBE-grown InGaNAsSb improved the PL efficiency. Two-step post-growth thermal annealing processes were optimized to obtain maximum PL efficiencies that yielded a typical blue shift of 50 and 30meV for InGaNAs and InGaNAsSb, respectively. We employed a streak camera to measure carrier lifetimes from both as-grown and thermally annealed samples. Carrier lifetimes of <30psec were obtained from the InGaNAs samples, whereas carrier lifetimes of up to ~150psec were obtained from the InGaNAsSb samples. We discuss possible reasons for short carrier lifetimes measured from MOVPE-grown InGaNAs(Sb) materials.

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Yongkun Sin, Stephen LaLumondiere, Toby Garrod, Tae Wan Kim, Jeremy Kirch, Luke Mawst, William T. Lotshaw, and Steven C. Moss "Carrier dynamics in MOVPE-grown bulk dilute nitride materials for multi-junction solar cells", Proc. SPIE 7933, Physics and Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices XIX, 79330H (21 February 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.873894

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