High-efficiency flexible III-V photovoltaic solar cells based on single-crystal-like thin films directly grown on metallic tapes

This study demonstrates the first flexible single-junction III-V photovoltaic solar cells (SCs) based on single-crystal-like gallium arsenide (GaAs) thin films on a low-cost metal substrate by direct and continuous deposition, which can bypass expensive single crystal wafer fabrication. The two-dimensional modeling of the GaAs SC is developed and used to study feasibility of single-crystal-like GaAs thin films for high performance SC devices. A promising SC device performance characteristic with an open-circuit voltage of 560 mV and short circuit current of 19.4 mA/cm(2), resulting in a conversion efficiency of similar to 7.6%, is demonstrated.