Improvement of the MOCVD-grown InGaP-on-Si towards high-efficiency solar cell application

The thermal cycle annealing (TCA) for GaAs layer grown on Si substrate (GaAs/Si) increased the photoluminescence (PL) intensity of InGaP epilayer which was regrown on the GaAs/Si substrate by about 100 times. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of double-crystal X-ray diffraction (DXRD) was decreased from 313 to 251 arcsec. From the electron-beam-induced current (EBIC) image measurements, the defect-related dark spots density (DSD) of the regrown InGaP layer was reduced by about 30% by using TCA GaAs/Si substrate. This means that TCA treatment for GaAs layer effectively increased the crystal quality of InGaP epilayer regrown on GaAs/Si substrate (InGaP/GaAs/Si). The PL intensity of InGaP epilayer was also enhanced due to the passivation of the residual defect-related nonradiative recombination centres by post-growth phosphine (PH3/H-2 = 10%) plasma exposure. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.