Thermal degradation comparison of delta-doped GaAs tunnel junctions using Si and Te n-type dopants

Tunnel junctions (TJs) are essential for high-performance multijunction solar cells to act as transparent low resistance paths for carriers to travel between adjacent cells. However, TJs typically exhibit highly degraded tunneling performance due to unwanted dopant out-diffusion during top cell growth. In this study, GaAs TJs with Si and Te delta-doping (δ-doping) were grown via solid source molecular beam epitaxy to investigate the tunneling performance and thermal stability. While Si δ-doped TJs exhibited typical tunneling characteristics with an Esaki peak current density of 173 A/cm2, Te δ-doped TJs revealed 1.5 A/cm2 at Vbias = 100 mV without negative resistance. It was found that the performance degradation after annealing at 600 °C for 90 min was significantly higher for TJs with Si δ-doping than for Te. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy measurements reveal that Te shows no clear signs of dopant diffusion while Si exhibited significant out-diffusion in the active TJ layer after thermal annealing. The superior thermal stability of Te compared to Si proves to be advantageous as an alternative n-type dopant for high temperature and long duration grown multi-junction solar cells.