Diffusion length improvements in GaAs associated with Zn diffusion during Ga/1-x/Al/x/As growth

Relatively good GaAs solar cells can be made from poor quality substrates by making the junction deep (more than 1 micron) instead of shallow and by leaching both the p and n GaAs regions during the growth process. Air-mass-zero efficiencies of 14.7% (19% AM1) have been obtained from substrates with starting substrate thickness of 0.6 micron.