U.S. Department of Defense

 

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

Applied Surface Science 395 (2017), pp. 105–109.

Comments

U.S. government work.

Abstract

The effect of a post-growth thermal treatment in two different heterostructures with InAlAsSb as the top layer grown by molecular beam epitaxy lattice-matched to InP, have been studied by diffraction contrast transmission electron microscopy (TEM).1 This novel top cell layer material with application in ultra-high efficiency solar cells were grown on (001) InP substrate with or without an InGaAs buffer layer. Initial photoluminescence (PL)2 measurements revealed deviations from their predicted bandgap, suggesting non-random atomic distribution of the quaternary layer. Then, a thermal annealing was performed at different temperatures and times. The effect on the structure of the InAlAsSb active layer caused by the new arrangement of layers and the post-growth annealing treatments has been reported. Our results show that the small compositional fluctuations of the as-grown heterostructures disappear after being annealed, and the bandgap energy correspondingly increases towards the predicted value.

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