Epitaxial growth of (100) GaAs on CeOx coated flexible metal substrates

Combining the unsurpassed performance of GaAs based multi-junction technologies with a conventional cheap roll to roll processing standards of thin film industry could lead to paradigm-shifting reduction of the cost of solar electricity and increase of specific efficiencies. We show growth of single crystalline GaAs using MBE directly on CeO₂ buffer in flexible samples. HRXRD confirms presence of dislocations in GaAs which is directly deposited using MBE on oxide buffer to be comparable to that present in GaAs on Ge intermediate buffer in flexible samples despite of lattice mismatch issues. GaAs solar cell on CeO₂ terminated buffer shows shunted diode characteristics while GaAs solar cell on Ge terminated buffer is shorted.