Investigation of electrically active defects in InGaAs quantum wire intermediate-band solar cells using deep-level transient spectroscopy technique

Noor Alhuda Al Saqri; Jorlandio F Felix; Mohsin Aziz; Vasyl P Kunets; Dler Jameel; David Taylor; Mohamed Henini; Mahmmoud S Abd El-Sadek; Colin Furrow; Morgan E Ware; Mourad Benamara; Mansour Mortazavi; Gregory Salamo

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/28/4/045707

Investigation of electrically active defects in InGaAs quantum wire intermediate-band solar cells using deep-level transient spectroscopy technique

Nanotechnology. 2017 Jan 27;28(4):045707. doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/28/4/045707. Epub 2016 Dec 20.

Authors

Noor Alhuda Al Saqri¹, Jorlandio F Felix, Mohsin Aziz, Vasyl P Kunets, Dler Jameel, David Taylor, Mohamed Henini, Mahmmoud S Abd El-Sadek, Colin Furrow, Morgan E Ware, Mourad Benamara, Mansour Mortazavi, Gregory Salamo

Affiliation

¹ School of Physics and Astronomy, Nottingham Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Center, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. Department of Physics, College of Science, Box 36, Sultan Qaboos University, Al Khoud 123, Oman.

PMID: 27997370
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/28/4/045707

Abstract

InGaAs quantum wire (QWr) intermediate-band solar cell-based nanostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy are studied. The electrical and interface properties of these solar cell devices, as determined by current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) techniques, were found to change with temperature over a wide range of 20-340 K. The electron and hole traps present in these devices have been investigated using deep-level transient spectroscopy (DLTS). The DLTS results showed that the traps detected in the QWr-doped devices are directly or indirectly related to the insertion of the Si δ-layer used to dope the wires. In addition, in the QWr-doped devices, the decrease of the solar conversion efficiencies at low temperatures and the associated decrease of the integrated external quantum efficiency through InGaAs could be attributed to detected traps E1_{QWR_D}, E2_{QWR_D}, and E3_{QWR_D} with activation energies of 0.0037, 0.0053, and 0.041 eV, respectively.