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Tandem solar cells are suited for space applications due to their high performance, but also have to be designed in such a way to minimize influence of degradation by the high energy particle flux in space. The analysis of the subcell performance is crucial to understand the device physics and achieve optimized designs of tandem solar cells. Here, the radiation-induced damage of inverted grown InGaP/GaAs/InGaAs triple-junction solar cells for various electron fluences are characterized using conventional current-voltage (I–V) measurements and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL). The conversion efficiencies of the entire device before and after damage are measured with I–V curves and compared with the efficiencies predicted from the time-resolved method. Using the time-resolved data the change in the carrier dynamics in the subcells can be discussed. Our optical method allows to predict the absolute electrical conversion efficiency of the device with an accuracy of better than 5%. While both InGaP and GaAs subcells suffered from significant material degradation, the performance loss of the total device can be completely ascribed to the damage in the GaAs subcell. This points out the importance of high internal electric fields at the operating point.

In-situ characterization is one of the most powerful techniques to improve material quality and device performance. Especially in view of highly efficient tandem solar cells this is an important issue for improving the cost-performance ratio. Optical techniques are suitable characterization methods, since they are non-destructing and contactless. In this work, we measured the power dependence of photoluminescence (PL) from the InGaP and GaAs subcells of an industry-standard triple-junction solar cell. High luminescence yields enhance the luminescence coupling, which was directly verified by time-resolved PL measurements. We present a new method to determine the internal luminescence efficiencies of InGaP and GaAs subcells with the aid of luminescence coupling. High luminescence efficiencies of 90% for GaAs and more than 20% for InGaP were found, which suggest that the material quality of the grown GaAs layer is excellent while the intrinsic luminescence limit of InGaP is still not reached even for high excitation conditions. The PL method is useful for probing the intrinsic material properties of the subcells in flat band condition, without influence of transport. Since no calibration of absolute PL is required, a fast screening of the material quality is possible, which should be extremely helpful for the solar cell industry.

The carrier upconversion dynamics in InAs quantum nanostructures are studied for intermediate-band solar-cell applications via ultrafast photoluminescence and photocurrent (PC) spectroscopy based on femtosecond excitation correlation (FEC) techniques. Strong upconverted PC-FEC signals are observed under resonant excitation of quantum well islands (QWIs), which are a few monolayer-thick InAs quantum nanostructures. The PC-FEC signal typically decays within a few hundred picoseconds at room temperature, which corresponds to the carrier lifetime in QWIs. The photoexcited electron and hole lifetimes in InAs QWIs are evaluated as functions of temperature and laser fluence. Our results provide solid evidence for electron–hole–hole Auger process, dominating the carrier upconversion in InAs QWIs at room temperature.

Conventional external quantum-efficiency measurement of solar cells provides charge-collection efficiency for approximate short-circuit conditions. Because this differs from actual operating voltages, the optimization of high-quality tandem solar cells is especially complicated. Here, we propose a contactless method, which allows for the determination of the voltage dependence of charge-collection efficiency for each subcell independently. By investigating the power dependence of photoluminescence decays, charge-separation and recombination-loss time constants are obtained. The upper limit of the charge-collection efficiencies at the operating points is then obtained by applying the uniform field model. This technique may complement electrical characterization of the voltage dependence of charge collection, since subcells are directly accessible.

We performed microscopic imaging of photoluminescence (PL) and photocurrent (PC) on InAs nanostructures including disklike structures (nanodisks) and quantum dots (QDs). The correlation between PL and PC images indicates that the major fraction of upconverted carriers originates from nanodisks. By analyzing the excitation spectra, we find evidence that nanodisks and QDs need to be spatially separated to enhance PC generation via upconversion. The efficient simultaneous use of both QDs and nanodisks is an alternative approach to intermediate-band solar cells, where low-energy photons are upconverted in the QDs and high-energy photons are efficiently upconverted in the nanodisks, resulting in enhanced carrier generation yields. With spatially resolved upconverted PL, we show that PC generation in nanodisks is due to ejection of both electrons and holes.

For intermediate-band solar cells, the broad absorption spectrum of quantum dots (QDs) offers a favorable conversion efficiency, and photocurrent generation via efficient two-step two-photon-absorption (TS-TPA) in QDs is essential for realizing high-performance solar cells. In the last decade, many works were dedicated to improve the TS-TPA efficiency by modifying the QD itself, however, the obtained results are far from the requirements for practical applications. To reveal the mechanisms behind the low TS-TPA efficiency in QDs, we report here on two- and three-beam photocurrent measurements of InAs quantum structures embedded in AlGaAs. Comparison of two- and three-beam photocurrent spectra obtained by subbandgap excitation reveals that the QD TS-TPA efficiency is improved significantly by suppressing the relaxation of hot TS-TPA carriers to unoccupied shallow InAs quantum structure states.

The mechanisms of upconverted photocurrent in InAs quantum structures embedded in AlxGa1-xAs were studied with simultaneous measurements of photoluminescence and photocurrent spectra. Efficient upconversion was verified in samples with and without quantum dots. The dominant upconversion process from low temperatures to room temperature was found to occur through an Auger process in disklike InAs quantum structures. The results suggest the importance of shallow energy levels, which enable upconversion and efficient carrier extraction through multiparticle interactions. The disklike structure was concluded to be a suitable intermediate-band structure in terms of the energy conversion efficiency.