Room-temperature minority-carrier injection-enhanced recovery of radiation-induced defects in p-InGaP and solar cells

We present here the direct observation of minority-carrier injection-enhanced annealing of radiation-induced defects in metalorganic chemical vapor deposition grown p-InGaP at room temperature, and the consequent recovery of radiation damage in InGaP n(+)-p junction solar cells. Deep level transient spectroscopy analysis shows that the main defect H2 (E-upsilon + 0.55 eV) in p-InGaP exhibits minority-carrier injection-enhanced annealing characterized by an activation energy (Delta E=0.51 eV) close to the activation energy for the recovery (Delta E=0.54 eV) of the defect responsible for diffusion length degradation in n(+)-p solar cells. The marked recovery of radiation damage in InGaP solar cells induced by minority-carrier injection is found to be correlated with the annihilation of the H2 defect. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)00118-2].