An empirical investigation of the InP shallow-homojunction solar cell

An experimental study of the performance of epitaxially grown InP shallow-homojunction solar cells as a function of the thickness and carrier concentration in the base and emitter layers is presented. Identification of improvements to cell design leading to higher performance is emphasized. As a result, using a near-optimum set of design parameters, cells with conversion efficiencies of 20.3 percent (global) and 17.6 percent (AM0) have been achieved. For such cells, it is shown that the internal response of the base layer is essentially perfect, whereas the emitter-layer properties can be improved substantially and warrant further investigation. Discrepancies between the results of the present study and those of earlier modeling efforts are discussed.