Achievement

Martin Diaz has been working in both the electrical engineering and materials science department to develop a new family of tandem solar cells. Because of the excellent lattice match between GaP and silicon and the wide bandgap of GaP Diaz has been using liquid phase epitaxy to grow thin layers of GaP on Si. Thus far he has succeeded in successfully growing 3um epitaxial Gallium Phosphide layer on <111> Si substrate with less than 6% Si concentration in the layer through liquid phase epitaxy. While this layer is not of sufficient purity to act as a solar cell, this layer can act as a buffer to a GaP solar cell.