Kevin L. Schulte is a scientist in the High Efficiency Crystalline PV group in the Materials Applications & Performance center at NREL.

He received BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from Northwestern University and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At Wisconsin, he designed and constructed a hydride vapor phase epitaxial (HVPE) growth reactor, with which he studied epitaxial growth fundamentals and defect incorporation mechanisms of III-V semiconductors.

At NREL he works to raise the efficiency and reduce the cost of III-V single and multijunction solar cells. He helped pioneer the high-throughput (>300 µm/hour) growth of III-V single-junction and tandem photovoltaic devices by dynamic-HVPE (D-HVPE), a technique with the potential to significantly reduce III-V device costs. He also investigates multijunction concentrator solar cells grown by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy, focusing on the interplay between microstructure and performance of lattice mismatched graded buffers and devices.

Research Interests

Fundamentals of III-V epitaxial growth

Epitaxial reactor and reaction modeling and reactor design

High-throughput, high-efficiency III-V photovoltaic devices grown by D-HVPE

High-efficiency multijunction concentrator photovoltaics

Mismatched epitaxial growth and devices

Low-cost seeds for III-V epitaxy

Featured Work

“Gallium Arsenide Solar Cells Grown at Rates Exceeding 300 µm h-1 by Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy,” Nature Communications (2019)

“High Throughput Semiconductor Deposition System,” US Patent #10192740B2 (2019)

“Multijunction GaInP/GaAs Solar Cells Grown by Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy,” Progress in Photovoltaics (2018)

“Building a Six-Junction Inverted Metamorphic Concentrator Solar Cell,” Journal of Photovoltaics (2018)

“High Growth Rate Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy at Low Temperature through Use of Uncracked Hydrides,” Applied Physics Letters (2018)

"Highly Transparent Compositionally Graded Buffers for New Metamorphic Multijunction Solar Cell Designs," Journal of Photovoltaics (2017)

“Controlled exfoliation of (100) GaAs-based devices by spalling fracture,” Applied Physics Letters (2016)

“A model for arsenic anti-site incorporation in GaAs grown by HVPE,” Journal of Applied Physics (2014)