Research
Clean Energy
Germanium-Based Solar Cells for Long Wavelength Sensitivity
James Kolodzey
- Package Design for High Performance Solar Cells
- 50% Efficient Solar Cells
- Fabrication of Light Emitters Based on Tin-Germanium Alloys
- Spintronic Sensors and Microwave Phase Detection
- Broadband Silicon-Based Quantum Dot Absorption Materials
- Terahertz Spectroscopy of Doped Nanostructures
- Dilute Nitride Technology for Infrared Detectors
- Germanium-Based Solar Cells for Long Wavelength Sensitivity
Current funding
DARPA
Group Staff
Graduate Student
Nathan Sustersic (now at Intel)
Collaborators
Professors Allen Barnett and Keith Goossen, University of Delaware
This project addresses the development of solar cells that are optimized for photons from the low energy part of the solar spectrum in the range between the bandgaps of germanium (0.66 eV) and silicon (1.12 eV). This is the wavelength range from 1.88 to 1.1 micrometer, where silicon is transparent. This research is important, because the germanium cells could be operated underneath silicon cells in a tandem multijunction configuration, and thus collect solar power that would otherwise be lost.
The amount of power in the solar spectrum between 0.66 and 1.1 eV with "1-sun" (AM 1.5) illumination is 15 %, or about 15 milliwatts–cm-2, compared to the total illumination of 100 mW–cm-2. Of the long wave solar energy that remains after conversion by conventional silicon cells, the proposed low energy cells can add a few percent of marginal efficiency, which could be leveraged over the huge number of new solar systems, which are growing at about 48 % per year worldwide. To combine excellent performance with low cost, the proposed cells will be fabricated of silicon germanium (SiGe) alloys by the epitaxial technique of chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Silicon and germanium can intermix across the whole alloy composition range, and the net bandgap energy can vary from 0.66 to 1.12 eV, depending on the composition. By optimizing solar cells that utilize low energy photons, our research should significantly improve the efficiency of solar power systems.
