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Concept
Heterojunction
Summary
A heterojunction is an interface between two layers or regions of dissimilar semiconductors. These semiconducting materials have unequal band gaps as opposed to a homojunction. It is often advantageous to engineer the electronic energy bands in many solid-state device applications, including semiconductor lasers, solar cells and transistors. The combination of multiple heterojunctions together in a device is called a heterostructure, although the two terms are commonly used interchangeably. The requirement that each material be a semiconductor with unequal band gaps is somewhat loose, especially on small length scales, where electronic properties depend on spatial properties. A more modern definition of heterojunction is the interface between any two solid-state materials, including crystalline and amorphous structures of metallic, insulating, fast ion conductor and semiconducting materials.
Heterojunction manufacturing generally requires the use of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) or chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technologies in order to precisely control the deposition thickness and create a cleanly lattice-matched abrupt interface. A recent alternative under research is the mechanical stacking of layered materials into van der Waals heterostructures.
Despite their expense, heterojunctions have found use in a variety of specialized applications where their unique characteristics are critical:
Solar cells: Heterojunctions are formed through the interface of a crystalline silicon substrate (band gap 1.1 eV) and amorphous silicon thin film (band gap 1.7 eV) in some solar cell architectures. The heterojunction is used to separate charge carriers in a similar way to a p–n junction. The Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin-Layer (HIT) solar cell structure was first developed in 1983 and commercialised by Sanyo/Panasonic. HIT solar cells now hold the record for the most efficient single-junction silicon solar cell, with a conversion efficiency of 26.7%.
Official source
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