On the Use of Transparent Conductive Oxides in High Concentrator III-V Multijunction Solar Cells

Transparent conductive oxides are commonplace in many PV technologies but have not been applied to III-V multijunction solar cells so far. In this paper, we analyze the current performance of the latest generation of these materials and study the potential advantages of their use in III-V multijunction solar cells via simulations and experiments. Calculations show that a number of conductive oxides have potential for improving the performance of these devices by boosting the lateral conductance of the emitter without significant optical losses. Initial experimental results reveal that there exist a number of practical challenges to be overcome to reach the improvements predicted by theory.