Energy Harvesting for GaAs Photovoltaics Under Low-Flux Indoor Lighting Conditions

GaAs photovoltaics are promising candidates for indoor energy harvesting to power small-scale (approximate to 1 mm(2)) electronics. This application has stringent requirements on dark current, recombination, and shunt leakage paths due to low-light conditions and small device dimensions. The power conversion efficiency and the limiting mechanisms in GaAs photovoltaic cells under indoor lighting conditions are studied experimentally. Voltage is limited by generation-recombination dark current attributed to perimeter sidewall surface recombination based on the measurements of variable cell area. Bulk and perimeter recombination coefficients of 1.464 pA/mm(2) and 0.2816 pA/mm, respectively, were extracted from dark current measurements. Resulting power conversion efficiency is strongly dependent on cell area, where current GaAs of 1-mm(2) indoor photovoltaic cells demonstrates power conversion efficiency of approximately 19% at 580 lx of white LED illumination. Reductions in both bulk and perimeter sidewall recombination are required to increase maximum efficiency (while maintaining small cell area near 1 mm(2)) to approach the theoretical power conversion efficiency of 40% for GaAs cells under typical indoor lighting conditions.