Youcef Ataellah Bioud
Postdoctoral fellow in Materials Engineering
Université de Sherbrooke
Award-winning publication: Defects Engineering in Heteroepitaxial Growth of Ge-on-Si: Porous Germanium-based Virtual Substrates for High-Efficiency Photovoltaic Devices
Published in: Nature Communications
Abstract
The cost of germanium-based solar cells is still too prohibitive to democratize the technology at large. In his doctoral thesis, Youcef Ataellah Bioud sets out an innovative approach to save up to 50% on solar cells made from category III-V compounds with over 40% efficiency that meet industry standards. The thermoelectrochemical nanostructuring process helps reduce the average dislocation density by over three orders of magnitude in a germanium-on-silicon structure. This technique can also be used to integrate III-V semiconductors into advanced silicon manufacturing, popular in many electronic applications.