Designing III-V dilute nitride alloys for IBSC application

The location of multiple bands in a dilute nitride GaNAs intermediate band solar cell (IBSC) can be tuned by the level of N amount in the GaAs host. It is observed that the open circuit voltage improves with increasing level of the N amount in our MBE grown IBSCs in which GaNAs layers are sandwiched between AlGaAs layers. This is ascribed to the improved blockage of the carrier leakage of the IB electrons over the AlGaAs backside IB barrier due to increased separation between the IB and conduction bands.