Epitaxial Lift Off of II-VI Thin Films Using Water-Soluble MgTe

This paper reports an epitaxial lift-off (ELO) method that uses water-soluble MgTe to obtain free-standing single-crystal CdTe/MgCdTe double-heterostructure (DH) thin films from samples grown monolithically on lattice-matched InSb substrates. Photoluminescence measurements on as-grown and free-stand...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of photovoltaics 2019-11, Vol.9 (6), p.1834-1838
Main Authors: Campbell, Calli M., Tsai, Cheng-Ying, Ding, Jia, Zhang, Yong-Hang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cadmium compounds
ENGINEERING
Epitaxial layers
Flexible electronics
Heterostructures
II-VI semiconductor materials
Intermetallic compounds
Lattice matching
Liftoff
luminescence
Optical microscopy
Photoluminescence
Photovoltaic cells
Single crystals
Solar cells
Substrates
Thin films
Water chemistry
X-ray diffraction
x-ray diffraction (XRD)
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Summary:This paper reports an epitaxial lift-off (ELO) method that uses water-soluble MgTe to obtain free-standing single-crystal CdTe/MgCdTe double-heterostructure (DH) thin films from samples grown monolithically on lattice-matched InSb substrates. Photoluminescence measurements on as-grown and free-standing films reveal that the optical quality of the DH survives ELO. This method potentially enables substantial increases in the conversion efficiencies of thin-film solar cells through enhancement of the photon-recycling effect. This process holds promise in multijunction PV applications that considers the integration of a 1.7-eV MgCdTe top cell and a crystalline Si bottom cell to form a tandem device with efficiency potentially higher than 30%. Additionally, the method can be applied to other families of devices, such as infrared photodetectors.
ISSN:2156-3381
2156-3403
DOI:10.1109/JPHOTOV.2019.2928469