Heteroepitaxial growth of SiGe on Si by LPE for high efficiency solar cells

Author

Wang, Yi ; Lu, Xuesong ; Huang, Susan R. ; Wang, Xiaoting ; Opila, Bobert ; Barnett, Allen

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

7-12 June 2009

Abstract

Heteroepitaxy SiGe on Si by liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) is a potential material for photovoltaic application. The Si_0.05Ge_0.95 solar cell with an energy gap of 0.72 eV can lead to a 7 percentage point increase in the Si-based multi-bandgap system or any multi-bandgap system that contains Si as the 1.1 eV solar cell. In this initial work we report first growth Si_xGe_1-x with 0.5<x<1 on Si substrate from Sn solution by LPE. Several microns thick n type SiGe layer on (111)-oriented Si substrate has been grown. EDS shows 53 At% germanium concentration in the SiGe alloy. SEM shows continuity and uniformity.

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; X-ray chemical analysis; energy gap; liquid phase epitaxial growth; scanning electron microscopy; semiconductor epitaxial layers; semiconductor growth; semiconductor materials; solar cells; SEM; Si; Si_0.05Ge_0.95; energy gap; heteroepitaxial growth; liquid phase epitaxy; multi-bandgap system; solar cell; Electrodes; Electrons; Germanium silicon alloys; Nanotubes; Photovoltaic cells; Photovoltaic systems; Radiative recombination; Silicon germanium; Solar power generation; Surface morphology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2009 34th IEEE

Conference_Location

Philadelphia, PA

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2949-3

Electronic_ISBN

0160-8371

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2009.5411424

Filename

5411424