Doubling the Power Output of Bifacial Thin-Film GaAs Solar Cells by Embedding Them in Luminescent Waveguides

摘要

Recent developments in epitaxial liftoff techniques for forming thin, high efficiency GaAs solar cells create opportunities to improve the economics of solar energy conversion by combining highly efficient operation with the prospect of scalable, low cost manufacturing, especially in advanced growth schemes that involve multiple layers in releasable stacks. These cells require GaAs at thicknesses of just a few microns or less, and can offer efficiencies as high as 28.8%, Efforts to reduce costs focus on techniques to improve the utilization of the growth chambers by accelerating the deposition rates and/ or by eliminating cycles of load/unload, and on methods to reuse the growth wafers.