Growth and characterization of p-InGaN/i-InGaN/n-GaN double-heterojunction solar cells on patterned sapphire substrates

In this letter, InGaN-based solar cells with a p-InGaN/i-InGaN/n-GaN double-heterojunction structure were fabricated and characterized. Two kinds of sapphire substrates [i.e., a conventional sapphire substrate (CSS) and a patterned sapphire substrate (PSS)] were used for epitaxial growth. Both the solar cells grown on the CSS and the PSS demonstrated a high open-circuit voltage of 2.05 and 2.08 V, respectively. However, the short-circuit current of the solar cells grown on the PSS showed an improvement of 27.6% compared with that of the cells grown on the CSS. Such observation could be attributed to low edge-dislocation density and the increase in the light-absorption path by the scattering of interface incident light between the substrate and the epitaxial layer for the solar cell grown on the PSS.