journal article·2013-05-01Open access

Effect of germanium fraction on the effective minority carrier lifetime in thin film amorphous-Si/crystalline-Si1xGex/crystalline-Si heterojunction solar cells

Sabina Abdul Hadi, Pouya Hashemi, Nicole DiLello, Evelina Polyzoeva, Ammar Nayfeh, Judy L. Hoyt

AIP Advances· Volume 3· Issue 5

Abstract

The effect of germanium fraction on the effective minority carrier lifetime (τeff) for epitaxial Si1-xGex layers is extracted using measurements on amorphous(a) Si(n+)/crystalline(c)-Si1-xGex(p)/crystalline(c)-Si(p+) heterojunction solar cells with x = 0.25, 0.41 and 0.56. The τeff extracted for Si0.75Ge0.25 is ∼1 μs, decreasing to ∼ 40 ns for Si0.44Ge0.56. In addition, the band-gap voltage offset (Woc) increases from 0.5 eV for Si to 0.65 eV for 56% Ge indicating an increase in non-radiative recombination consistent with the reduction in effective lifetime.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Silicon and Solar Cell Technologies · Thin-Film Transistor Technologies · solar cell performance optimization

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Masdar Institute of Science and Technology Abu Dhabi 1 , United Arab Emirates

MIT 2 Microsystems Technology Laboratories, , Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

References (15)

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