An Improved Design Of The Substrate Of Stretchable Gallium Arsenide Photovoltaics

A new design has been proposed and numerically analyzed for the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate of gallium arsenide (GaAs) photovoltaics. A stack structure is realized by inserting a cube between island and basement, and thus, a support structure of basement-cube-island is formed. Numerical analyses show that, as the deformation of GaAs layer and interfacial stresses are concerned, the height of the stack structure of only island and cube has direct effect on deformation isolation. Especially, the length of the inserted cube can dramatically increase this effect. Therefore, when a cube is inserted between island and basement, a thin photovoltaic film can be realized with reliable performance. As stretch is applied to the film, the thickness of encapsulation is still the dominant factor on deformation of GaAs layer and interfacial stresses, and the length of cube only has slight effect on the influence.