High Mobility Single-Crystalline-Like Gaas Thin Films On Inexpensive Flexible Metal Substrates By Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition

We demonstrate heteroepitaxial growth of single-crystalline-like n and p-type doped GaAs thin films on inexpensive, flexible, and light-weight metal foils by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. Single-crystalline-like Ge thin film on biaxially textured templates made by ion beam assisted deposition on metal foil served as the epitaxy enabling substrate for GaAs growth. The GaAs films exhibited strong (004) preferred orientation, sharp in-plane texture, low grain misorientation, strong photoluminescence, and a defect density of similar to 10(7) cm(-2). Furthermore, the GaAs films exhibited hole and electron mobilities as high as 66 and 300 cm(2)/V-s, respectively. High mobility single-crystalline-like GaAs thin films on inexpensive metal substrates can pave the path for roll-to-roll manufacturing of flexible III-V solar cells for the mainstream photovoltaics market. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.