Improved defect analysis of Gallium Arsenide solar cells using image enhancement

A new technique has been developed to capture, digitize, and enhance the image of light emission from a forward biased direct bandgap solar cell. Since the forward biased light emission from a direct bandgap solar cell has been shown to display both qualitative and quantitative information about the solar cell's performance and its defects, signal processing techniques can be applied to the light emission images to identify and analyze shunt diodes. Shunt diodes are of particular importance because they have been found to be the type of defect which is likely to cause failure in a GaAs solar cell. The presence of a shunt diode can be detected from the light emission by using a photodetector to measure the quantity of light emitted at various current densities. However, to analyze how the shunt diodes affect the quality of the solar cell the pattern of the light emission must be studied. With the use of image enhancement routines, the light emission can be studied at low light emission levels where shunt diode effects are dominant

GROND - a 7-channel imager

We describe the construction of GROND, a 7-channel imager, primarily designed for rapid observations of gamma-ray burst afterglows. It allows simultaneous imaging in the Sloan g'r'i'z' and near-infrared $JHK$ bands. GROND was commissioned at the MPI/ESO 2.2m telescope at La Silla (Chile) in April 2007, and first results of its performance and calibration are presented.Comment: 25 pages, 21 figs, PASP (subm); version with full-resolution figures at http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~jcg/GROND/grond_pasp.pd

A New Generalized Detailed Balance Formulation to Calculate Solar Cell Efficiency Limits

Presented at the 17th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; Munich, Germany; October 22-26, 2001.Solar cells efficiency limits can be calculated either by thermodynamic or detailed balance approaches. For a single energy (i.e., single junction) solar cell, detailed balance equations are identical to the thermodynamic equations. However, standard detailed balance techniques cannot be directly used to analyze new approaches for higher efficiency solar cells if mechanisms other than radiative generation or recombination are included. A generalized form of detailed balance is presented, which is consistent with thermodynamic approaches but retains the benefits of detailed balance approaches. The generalized detailed balance is used to analyze recombination and thermalization in quantum well solar cells. This analysis demonstrates that an advantage of new approaches to high efficiency solar cells is that energy can be recovered from non-ideal or non-radiative processes and that if the solar cell system is constrained in some way, the inclusion of these non-ideal mechanisms can be beneficial

Investigation of Localized Electric Field in the Type-II InAs/GaAsSb/GaAs Structure

The effect of localized electric field (F) was investigated in the type-II InAs/GaAsSb/GaAs structures. To compare type-I to type-II, two types of samples with different Sb contents was grown by molecular beam epitaxy, whose Sb contents are 3% (type-I) and 16% (type-II), respectively. In the both samples, we performed excitation power dependent-photoreflectance at 10 K and the result showed that the period of the Franz-Keldysh oscillation, revealed above the band gap $(E_{g})$ of GaAs, was broadened in the only type-II system, which means that F was also increased because it is proportional to the period of the Franz-Keldysh oscillation while the period of the Franz-Keldysh oscillations stayed unchanged in type-I system. This phenomenon is explained by that the F was affected by the band bending effect caused by the spatially separated photo-excited carriers in the interface between GaAsSb and GaAs. The F changed linearly as a function of square root of excitation power as expected for the F. Moreover, F was calculated using fast Fourier transform method for a qualitative analysis, which is in a good agreement with the theory of triangular well approximation