Room-temperature minority-carrier injection-enhanced recovery of radiation-induced defects in p-InGaP and solar cells

We present here the direct observation of minority-carrier injection-enhanced annealing of radiation-induced defects in metalorganic chemical vapor deposition grown p-InGaP at room temperature, and the consequent recovery of radiation damage in InGaP n⁺-p junction solar cells. Deep level transient spectroscopy analysis shows that the main defect H2 (E_v+0.55 eV) in p-InGaP exhibits minority-carrier injection-enhanced annealing characterized by an activation energy (ΔE=0.51 eV) close to the activation energy for the recovery (ΔE=0.54 eV) of the defect responsible for diffusion length degradation in n⁺-p solar cells. The marked recovery of radiation damage in InGaP solar cells induced by minority-carrier injection is found to be correlated with the annihilation of the H2 defect. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.