GLOBAL-Promoting Research Partnership in Fabrication of Advanced III-nitride Optoelectronics With Ultra Energy Efficiency Using Nanotechnology

全球促进利用纳米技术制造具有超高能效的先进III族氮化物光电子器件的研究伙伴关系

• 批准号: EP/K004220/1
• 负责人: Tao Wang
• 金额: $ 40.42万
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FK004220%2F1
• 关键词: GLOBAL; Promoting; Research; Partnership; Fabrication

Our research has the potential to meet two major challenges which human beings are facing: energy crisis and climate change. Currently, the energy consumed due to general illumination accounts for 29% of the world's total energy consumption. Although the energy provided by an hour of solar radiation on the Earth is equivalent to the world's total energy consumption per year, solar cells contribute only 0.03% to the figure. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new technologies to achieve ultra energy-efficient solid-state lighting sources and solar cells. The appearance of III-nitride semiconductors provides human beings with such a unique opportunity, as the light emission from III-nitrides covers the complete visible spectrum and also a major part of the solar spectrum. It has been predicted that III-nitride LEDs if used in our homes and offices could save 15% of the electricity generated at power stations, 15% of the fuel used, and 15% reduction in carbon emission.For more than a decade substantial efforts have been devoted to developing high-brightness III-nitride LEDs (HB-LEDs) worldwide. Consequently, major achievements have been made. However, a fatal problem has appeared, and has to be solved urgently. That is the well-known "efficiency droop": the efficiency of HB-LEDs shows the highest value only at a low injection current, and a further increase in injection current leads to a significant reduction in efficiency. This is the "efficiency droop". Under the injection current required for practical applications, the efficiency drops down to >50% of the peak value, meaning that a large amount of energy has been wasted. This also causes a severe reliability issue, as the wasted energy leads to an elevated temperature of the devices and thus severe degradation in device performance. The physical origins of the efficiency droop are very complicated and thus unclear. So far, there is not any efficient solution. In the project, the scientists from 6 world-leading teams at University of Sheffield, Yale University (USA), Nanjing University (China) and Technology University of Braunschweig (Germany) are pooling their unique but complementary expertise, proposing to employ a number of advanced nanotechnologies and epitaxial growth techniques in order to explore the fundamental issue, and then achieve ultra energy-efficient LEDs. For solar cells, it has been predicted that an energy-conversion efficiency of >50% can be achieved with III-nitrides, which is much higher than that of any current solar cell. The solar energy-conversion efficiency of current III-nitride solar cells is extremely low, only ~3% in the best report due to a number of technologic challenges. We will combine our complementary expertise from 6 teams to tackle the challenges by employing a similar nanotechnology to fabricate into nanorod array solar cells on the epiwafers with a thick super-lattice structure on the GaN substrates with ultra-high crystal quality.

我们的研究有可能应对人类面临的两个主要挑战：能源危机和气候变化。目前，由于一般照明而消耗的能源占世界总能源消耗的29％。尽管地球上一个太阳辐射提供的能量相当于每年全球的总能源消耗，但太阳能电池对该数字仅贡献0.03％。因此，有必要开发新技术来实现超节能的固态照明来源和太阳能电池。 III二硝酸半导体的出现为人类提供了如此独特的机会，因为III氮化物的光发射涵盖了完整的可见光谱，也涵盖了太阳光谱的主要部分。据预测，如果在我们的家中使用的III氮化物LED可以节省电站发电的15％，使用的燃料的15％，碳排放量减少了15％。十多年来，一直致力于在全球范围内开发高光泽III氮化物LED（HB-LED）。因此，已经取得了重大成就。但是，已经出现了致命的问题，必须紧急解决。这是众所周知的“效率下垂”：HB LED的效率仅在低注射电流时显示出最高的值，并且进一步增加的注射电流导致效率显着降低。这是“效率下垂”。在实际应用所需的注入电流下，效率下降到峰值的50％> 50％，这意味着大量能量已经浪费了。这也引起了严重的可靠性问题，因为浪费的能量导致设备温度升高，因此设备性能严重降解。效率下垂的物理起源非常复杂，因此不清楚。到目前为止，还没有任何有效的解决方案。在该项目中，来自谢菲尔德大学，耶鲁大学（美国），南京大学（中国）和布劳恩斯奇维格技术大学（德国）的6个世界领先团队的科学家（德国）正在汇集其独特但互补的专业知识，建议雇用许多先进的纳米技术和外延生长技术，以探索基本问题，然后实现超节能的LED。对于太阳能电池，已经预测，使用III-硝酸盐可以实现> 50％的能量转换效率，这远高于任何当前太阳能电池。当前III氮化物太阳能电池的太阳能转换效率极低，由于许多技术挑战，最佳报告中只有3％。我们将通过使用类似的纳米技术来结合6个团队的补充专业知识，以应对挑战，以在Epiwafers上制造成纳米棒阵列太阳能电池，并在GAN底物上具有超高晶体质量的GAN底物上具有较厚的超级粘性结构。

项目成果

Semi-polar InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well solar cells with spectral response at up to 560 nm

• DOI: 10.1016/j.solmat.2017.10.005
• 发表时间: 2018-02
• 期刊: Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells
• 影响因子: 6.9
• 作者: J. Bai;Y. Gong;Z. Li;Yun Zhang;Tao Wang

Influence of the ITO current spreading layer on efficiencies of InGaN-based solar cells

• DOI: 10.1016/j.solmat.2015.10.026
• 发表时间: 2016-02
• 期刊: Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells
• 影响因子: 6.9
• 作者: J. Bai;M. Athanasiou;Tao Wang

Effect of an ITO current spreading layer on the performance of InGaN MQW solar cells

• DOI: 10.1002/pssc.201510171
• 发表时间: 2016-01
• 期刊: Physica Status Solidi (c)
• 作者: J. Bai;M. Athanasiou;Tao Wang

Characterization of thickness, elemental distribution and band-gap properties in AlGaN/GaN quantum wells by aberration-corrected TEM/STEM

通过像差校正 TEM/STEM 表征 AlGaN/GaN 量子阱中的厚度、元素分布和带隙特性

• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/371/1/012014
• 发表时间: 2012
• 期刊: Conference Series
• 作者: Amari H

Efficiency enhancement of InGaN/GaN solar cells with nanostructures

纳米结构 InGaN/GaN 太阳能电池的效率提升

• DOI: 10.1063/1.4864640
• 发表时间: 2014
• 期刊: Applied Physics Letters
• 影响因子: 4
• 作者: Bai J