Electrical property of infrared-sensitive InAs solar cells

InAs infrared-sensitive solar cells are fabricated by using the films grown by the liquid phase epitaxy technique. The film microstructures are characterized by x-ray diffraction and scanning electronic microscopy. The currentvoltage characteristics of the solar cells in the dark and under AM1.5 illumination at 300K and 77K are discussed. The conversion efficiency of p-InAs/n-sub InAs cells decreases when the thickness of the p-type film changes from 1.7 μm to 3.5 μm, which is caused by the reduced effective photons near p-n junction. The p-InAs/n-InAs/n-sub InAs solar cell with the conversion efficiency of 7.43% in 1-2.5 μm under AM1.5 at 77K is obtained. The short circuit current density increases dramatically with decreasing temperature due to the weakened effect of phonon scattering.