Despite GaAs-based photovoltaics being the clear champions of efficiency for solar cells, they have relatively limited use in today's market. In both world electricity generation and world electricity generating capacity, solar electricity is growing faster than any other source of fuel (wind, hydro, biomass, and so on) for the last decade. However, GaAs solar cells have not currently been adopted for widespread solar electricity generation. This is largely due to the cost of GaAs solar cells - in space applications, high performance is required and the corresponding high cost of the existing GaAs technologies is accepted. For example, GaAs-based photovoltaics show the best resistance to gamma radiation and high temperature fluctuations, which are of great importance for spacecraft. But in comparison to other solar cells, III-V solar cells are two to three orders of magnitude more expensive than other technologies such as silicon-based solar cells. The primary sources of this cost are the epitaxial growth costs and the substrate the cell is deposited on.
GaAs solar cells are most commonly fabricated utilizing epitaxial growth techniques such as metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE). A significant reduction in costs for these methods would require improvements in tool costs, throughput, material costs, and manufacturing efficiency. Increasing the deposition rate could reduce costs, but this cost reduction would be limited by the fixed times in other parts of the process such as cooling and heating.
The substrate used to grow these solar cells is usually germanium or gallium arsenide which are notably expensive materials. One of the main pathways to reduce substrate costs is to reuse the substrate. An early method proposed to accomplish this is epitaxial lift-off (ELO), but this method is time-consuming, somewhat dangerous (with its use of hydrofluoric acid), and requires multiple post-processing steps. However, other methods have been proposed that use phosphide-based materials and hydrochloric acid to achieve ELO with surface passivation and minimal post-etching residues and allows for direct reuse of the GaAs substrate. There is also preliminary evidence that spalling could be used to remove the substrate for reuse. An alternative path to reduce substrate cost is to use cheaper materials, although materials for this application are not currently commercially available or developed.
Yet another consideration to lower GaAs solar cell costs could be concentrator photovoltaics. Concentrators use lenses or parabolic mirrors to focus light onto a solar cell, and thus a smaller (and therefore less expensive) GaAs solar cell is needed to achieve the same results. Concentrator systems have the highest efficiency of existing photovoltaics.
So, technologies such as concentrator photovoltaics and methods in development to lower epitaxial growth and substrate costs could lead to a reduction in the cost of GaAs solar cells and forge a path for use in terrestrial applications.