Composition dependent growth dynamics in molecular beam epitaxy of GaInNAs solar cells

We have investigated the role of the nitrogen content, the growth parameters, and the annealing processes involved in molecular beam epitaxy of GaInNAs solar cells lattice-matched to GaAs. The nitrogen composition was varied between 1% and 5%. The influence of the growth temperature was assessed by performing photoluminescence, atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffraction, reflection high-energy electron diffraction, quantum efficiency and light-biased current-voltage measurements. The growth temperature ensuring the best cell parameters was found to be 440 C. At this temperature we were able to incorporate up to 4% of nitrogen and achieve a good material quality. Further increase of the N composition to 5% led to phase separation. For the lattice matched samples grown within the optimal temperature range, we have identified a clear (1×3) surface reconstruction. Using the optimized growth we have demonstrated a GaInNAs p-i-n solar cell structure containing 4% nitrogen, that exhibited a short-circuit current density as high as 33.8 mA/cm² in respect to effective area illuminated. These measurements have been performed under real sun AM1.5 (~1000 W/m²) illumination. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.