Four-Junction Wafer-Bonded Concentrator Solar Cells

The highest solar cell conversion efficiencies are achieved with four-junction devices under concentrated sunlight illumination. Different cell architectures are under development, all targeting an ideal bandgap combination close to 1.9, 1.4, 1.0, and 0.7 eV. Wafer bonding is used in this work to combine materials with a significant lattice mismatch. Three cell architectures are presented using the same two top junctions of GaInP/GaAs but different infrared absorbers based on Germanium, GaSb, or GaInAs on InP. The modeled efficiency potential at 500 suns is in the range of 49-54% for all three devices, but the highest efficiency is expected for the InP-based cell. An efficiency of 46% at 508 suns was already measured by AIST in Japan for a GaInP/GaAs//GaInAsP/GaInAs solar cell and represents the highest independently confirmed efficiency today. Solar cells on Ge and GaSb are in the development phase at Fraunhofer ISE, and the first demonstration of functional devices is presented in this paper.