Thin film GaP for solar cell application

I Morozov (1) , A Gudovskikh (2, 1) , D Kudryashov (1) , E. Nikitina (1) , Jean-Paul Kleider (3) , A Myasoedov (4, 1) , V Levitskiy (5)

1 Saint Petersburg Academic University
2 Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University "LETI"
3 GeePs - Laboratoire Génie électrique et électronique de Paris
4 A.F. Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute
5 Research and development center for thin-film technologies in energetics

A new approach to the silicon based heterostructures technology consisting of the growth of III-V compounds (GaP) on a silicon substrate by low-temperature plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) is proposed. The basic idea of the method is to use a time modulation of the growth process, i.e. time separated stages of atoms or precursors transport to the growing surface, migration over the surface, and crystal lattice relaxation for each monolayer. The GaP layers were grown on Si substrates by PE-ALD at 350°C with phosphine (PH3) and trimethylgallium (TMG) as sources of III and V atoms. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy demonstrate that the grown GaP films have homogeneous amorphous structure, smooth surface and a sharp GaP/Si interface. The GaP/Si heterostructures obtained by PE-ALD compare favourably to that conventionally grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Indeed, spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements indicate similar interband optical absorption while photoluminescence measurements indicate higher charge carrier effective lifetime. The better passivation properties of GaP layers grown by PE-ALD demonstrate a potential of this technology for new silicon based photovoltaic heterostructure

Domains: Materials

I Morozov, A Gudovskikh, D Kudryashov, E. Nikitina, Jean-Paul Kleider, et al.. Thin film GaP for solar cell application. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2016, 741, pp.012088. ⟨10.1088/1742-6596/741/1/012088⟩. ⟨hal-02404610⟩