Design and Performance Enhancement of a GaAs-Based Homojunction Solar Cell Using Ga0.5In0.5P as a Back Surface Field (BSF): A Simulation Approach

Abstract

The GaAs semiconductor is a solar energy promising material for photovoltaic applications due to its good optical and electronic properties. In this work, a homojunction GaAs solar cell with AlxGa1-xAs and GayIn1-yP solar energy materials as window and back surface field (BSF) layers, respectively, was simulated and investigated using SCAPS-1D software. The performance of the GaAs-based solar cell is evaluated for different proportions of x and y , which allowed us to obtain the values of 0.8 and 0.5 for x and y , respectively, as the best values for high performance. We then continued the optimization by taking into account some parameters of the solar cell, such as thickness, doping, and bulk defect density of the p-GaAs base, n-GaAs emitter, and Ga0.5In0.5P BSF layer. Solar cell efficiency increases with emitter thickness, but the recombination phenomenon is more pronounced than that of electron-hole pair generation in the case of a thicker base. The effect of variation in the work function of the back contact has also been studied, and the best performance is for a platinum (Pt) electrode. The optimized GaAs-based solar cell achieves a power conversion efficiency of 35.44% ( J SC = 31.52  mA/cm2, V OC = 1.26  V, FF = 89.14 %) and a temperature coefficient of -0.036%/°C. These simulation results provide insight into the various ways to improve the efficiency of GaAs-based solar cells.