JP2010206074A - Semiconductor light-emitting element and semiconductor solar cell - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain high light absorptivity and high-efficient photoelectric conversion by achieving a multilayer active layer of quantum dot introduction layers. <P>SOLUTION: An optical element has the active layer formed by multi-laminating layers into which quantum dots are introduced and there is no lattice strain in the active layer. The optical element is characterized in that: quantum dots and a parent body into which the quantum dots are introduced are made of materials each having a lattice constant of ≤0.5%; and the material of the parent body into which the quantum dots are introduced has larger band gap energy than the material constituting the quantum dots. A solar cell is characterized in that it is constituted by arranging electrodes above and below the active layer and the active layer is the active layer described in any claim. The solar cell is characterized in that the quantum dots constituting the active layer are made of GaAs and the parent body is made of Al<SB>x</SB>Ga<SB>1-x</SB>As (0<x≤1). <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a semiconductor optical device having an active layer in which layers made of quantum dots are multilayered, and a semiconductor solar cell having such an active layer.

Optical elements used in optical sensors, optical communications, CCDs for digital cameras, etc., and optical elements such as semiconductor solar cells that generate electricity from sunlight, have their target performance greatly affected by the performance of their active layers. It is. Hereinafter, a semiconductor solar cell will be described as an example.
As the semiconductor solar cell, silicon, GaAs (comprised of gallium and arsenic, binary compound semiconductor), InP (binary compound semiconductor composed of indium and phosphorus), etc. are mainly used, and a single junction is used. In this case, the theoretical limit of the conversion efficiency is about 30%. In order to obtain the required power, the area must be large and the cost must be high. The theoretical limit of this efficiency is that, as shown in FIG. 1, the electron-hole pair generated when irradiated with light having energy larger than the band gap of the semiconductor immediately relaxes to the energy at the band edge. This is because the semiconductor is transparent to light smaller than the band gap and the light cannot be used at all.

Thus, various efforts have been made to improve the efficiency of solar cells. For example, a structure in which quantum dots are introduced into a light detection layer, that is, an active layer, has been proposed. As shown in FIG. 3, by introducing quantum dots, the light absorption by the quantum dots having a smaller band gap is added to the light absorption by the base material of the active layer, so that sunlight is used more efficiently. Will be able to.
In this specification, a quantum dot is a semiconductor nanostructure having a size of about 10 nanometers (about the de Broglie wavelength), in which electrons (holes and excitons) are present in all three dimensions. It means something that is trapped. In the quantum dot, the electron level is completely discretized.

The reason for using quantum dots is that, as described in column 0020 of Patent Document 2, the electron levels are completely discretized in quantum dots, so that the level is raised to the upper level once due to a phonon bottleneck. This is because, for example, an effect that the electrons hardly fall to the lower level can be expected.
In the present specification, the phonon bottleneck refers to a phenomenon of suppressing energy relaxation of electrons or holes generated in a quantum dot by phonon emission.

For example, Patent Document 1 discloses an invention relating to a structure in which quantum dots are formed in a quantum well in an i layer which is an active layer of a pin solar cell, and a long wavelength light other than the wavelength to which the quantum well is sensitive. It comes to be sensitive to. Patent Document 3 discloses an invention that introduces quantum dots (called lattice mismatched quantum dots) that are self-formed by utilizing lattice distortion due to the difference in lattice constant between the base material and the quantum dot material. Yes. Patent Document 2 discloses an invention related to high efficiency by changing the band structure of a quantum dot material.
Note that the lattice mismatch system is a lattice mismatch in the case of a ¹ b where the lattice constants of the base material and the quantum dot material are a and b, respectively. Here, for the reason described in the item [0014], When the difference is 0.5% or more, a lattice mismatch system is assumed. In addition, the lattice matching system is used for the case below that. When there is no introduction of dislocations or the like, {100x (ba) / a}% lattice distortion is generated in the quantum dot material due to this lattice constant difference.

<Problems of existing technology>
As quantum dots to be introduced into the solar cell structure, the quantum dot production method in columns 0018 to 0024 of Patent Document 1 is a technique based on a so-called nano-processing technique.
(1) The quality deterioration of the quantum dots becomes remarkable due to the lithography process.
(2) It is not practical to stack high-density quantum dots in a stacked manner because the process is complicated and costs increase.
Note that in this specification, the lithography process refers to a process of drawing a mask pattern with light, electrons, or the like and etching a material or making a hole in accordance with the pattern.
Further, columns 0025 to 0033 of Patent Document 1, columns 0015-0016 of Patent Document 3, and FIG. 1 of Non-Patent Document 1 describe a method of using lattice mismatched self-formed quantum dots. (In this case, InAs / GaAs) However, FIG. 5, it is known that in the lattice mismatch system, when the number of stacked quantum dots is increased, lattice distortion due to lattice mismatch is accumulated, and the characteristics of the element are significantly deteriorated. It has also been reported that when the number of stacked layers increases, the formation of quantum dots themselves does not occur. FIG. 4 shows an actual electron microscope image.
In the present specification, self-formed quantum dots are generated by a phenomenon (self-formation) in which a three-dimensional structure is automatically formed even though a material is supplied uniformly in a plane. It refers to the quantum dot.

  As a technique for solving these problems, FIG. As shown in FIG. 5, attempts have been made to compensate for lattice distortion caused by total lattice mismatch by adjusting the lattice constant of the interlayer between quantum dot layers (shown in FIG. 5). In the epitaxial growth technology, the material system that can realize this idea is limited, and it requires extremely precise epitaxial growth control, which is not practical in practice.

An estimate of how many quantum dots are necessary to obtain sufficient efficiency using a solar cell into which quantum dots are introduced has not yet been established, but a simple estimate can be made from the light absorption coefficient. Taking GaAs as an example, the absorption coefficient (α) at room temperature of 2 eV is ⁴ × 10 ⁴ / cm. (6) This indicates that the intensity of the emitted light (I) is absorbed I = I ₀ e ^-ax next rest when the light intensity I ₀ is incident on the semiconductor in thickness xcm Yes. For example, to absorb 99% of 2 eV light incident on GaAs, a thickness of about 1.2 microns is required when simply converted into a film thickness. When quantum dots are introduced, FIG. 2, the effect of sharpening the density of states is expected to increase the absorption coefficient at a specific wavelength by about an order of magnitude per unit volume (shown in FIG. 7). Therefore, in an extremely ideal case, the total volume of the quantum dots is required to be about 120 nm in terms of film.
As shown in FIG. 2 of Non-Patent Document 4, the lattice mismatched self-formed quantum dots generally have a film thickness of about 0.5 nm to 2 nm when converted into a two-dimensional layer per layer. If more materials are supplied per layer, the crystal quality of the quantum dots is lowered due to the occurrence of dislocations, and the ratio of non-radiative recombination is greatly increased. That is, the solar cell element characteristics are deteriorated. Since it is about 0.5 nm to 2 nm per layer, in order to realize sufficient light absorption, it is necessary to include in the base material a structure in which at least 60 layers of these quantum dots are stacked in the growth direction. I understand that.

The above estimation is an extremely ideal case, and in reality, a much larger film thickness (= number of stacked layers) is required due to the influence of excitation levels formed in the quantum dots.
That is, as described in FIG. 5 of Non-Patent Document 1, when using a material system in which defects such as dislocations are introduced by the number of stacked quantum dots of about 50 layers, a solar cell having sufficient efficiency is Cannot be realized.

  In view of such a situation, the present invention aims to realize a multilayered active layer of a quantum dot introduction layer, which has been only ideal in the past.

Invention 1 is an optical element having an active layer in which a quantum dot-introduced layer is multilayered, wherein the matrix material in the active layer and the quantum dot material have substantially the same lattice constant, and the quantum dot and the matrix material There is almost no lattice distortion. Therefore, there is almost no lattice distortion in the entire active layer.
A second aspect of the invention is characterized in that, in the optical element of the first aspect, the quantum dots and the base material into which the quantum dots are made are made of a material having a lattice constant of 1% or less.
Invention 3 is characterized in that, in the optical element of Invention 1 or 2, the band gap energy of the base material into which the quantum dots are introduced is larger than the material constituting the quantum dots.
Invention 4 is a solar cell in which electrodes are arranged above and below the active layer, wherein the active layer is the active layer according to any one of Inventions 1 to 3.
The invention 5 is the solar cell of the invention 4, characterized in that the quantum dots constituting the active layer are made of GaAs and the base material is made of Al _x Ga _1-x As (0 <x ≦ 1).

In inventions 1 to 3, an effect of preventing the introduction of defects such as dislocations caused by lattice distortion due to lattice mismatch by controlling the material relationship between the quantum dot and its base so that there is no lattice mismatch is obtained. It depends on what was realized.
For this reason, in the present invention, in a wide range that has not been heretofore, not only can the light absorption ability suitable for the application be set by the number of laminated layers, but also high light absorption and photoelectric conversion that are not conventional can be exhibited. I was able to do it.
In particular, in the solar cell, it is possible to realize an efficiency corresponding to the theoretical efficiency.

The schematic diagram of the carrier production | generation mechanism at the time of irradiating the semiconductor solar cell with the light of energy larger than a band gap. Excited to the upper side of the conduction band (or valence band), immediately releases thermal energy and relaxes to the band edge. At this time, energy is lost. The schematic diagram of the carrier production | generation mechanism at the time of irradiating the light of energy smaller than a band gap to a semiconductor solar cell. The semiconductor is transparent to light of this energy, and all of the semiconductor is transmitted and does not contribute to power generation. This amount of light is lost. The schematic diagram of the carrier production | generation mechanism at the time of irradiating light to the semiconductor solar cell which introduce | transduced the quantum dot. Although semiconductors are transparent to light with energy smaller than the band gap, the introduction of quantum dots makes it possible to absorb light with lower energy and improve power generation efficiency. FIG. 5 is a cross-sectional TEM image of the InAs quantum dot stacked structure shown in FIG. As shown in (a), good quantum dots can be formed by stacking about 10 layers. However, in (b) where 50 layers are stacked, dislocations are formed and the crystal quality is lowered. In addition, the formation of quantum dots per se is not observed in the upper part. FIG. 5 is a cross-sectional TEM image of the InAs quantum dot stacked structure shown in FIG. Using InP as a substrate, the distortion of InAs quantum dots is compensated by using InGaAlAs for the dot intermediate layer, and succeeding in preventing the formation of dislocations and the like even after 30 layers are stacked. The graph which shows the wavelength dependence of the light absorption coefficient of GaAs. For light irradiation around 2 eV, the absorption coefficient is about 4 × 10 ⁴ / cm. FIG. The graph which shows the increase effect of the absorption coefficient by a quantum dot shown by 2. FIG. In the bulk, the light absorption coefficient of about 10 ³ / cm increases by about an order of magnitude to 10 ⁴ / cm or more as the state density is sharpened. The schematic diagram of the photon detection layer which embedded the lattice matching type | system | group quantum dot. The difference in lattice constant between the base material and the embedded quantum dots is 0.5% or less, and the band gap energy is larger in the base material. By stacking multiple quantum dots, light having energy lower than the band gap of the base material can be efficiently absorbed by the quantum dots. The schematic diagram of a droplet epitaxy method. After growing the AlGaAs layer on the GaAs substrate, only Ga is first supplied to form Ga droplets. Subsequently, arsenic is irradiated and crystallized to produce GaAs quantum dots. Finally, by embedding this with AlGaAs, lattice-matched quantum dots embedded in AlGaAs are self-formed. A photograph of an atomic force microscope showing a GaAs quantum dot formed on AlGaAs by a droplet epitaxy method. The density of the quantum dots is 3 × 10 ¹⁰ / cm ² . Scanning electron microscope photograph showing GaAs quantum dots formed by droplet epitaxy embedded in AlGaAs. White dots are quantum dots. Analysis of the lattice image confirmed that quantum dots with excellent crystallinity were formed almost without distortion. FIG. 3 is a schematic view showing a structure epitaxially grown by the molecular beam epitaxy apparatus of Example 2. When light is irradiated, light is absorbed by the undoped AlGaAs layer and quantum dot layer, generating electron-hole pairs, and a power generation effect is obtained. Photo of solar cell element of Example 2 produced by attaching electrodes to the structure of FIG. 12 A solar cell operation is performed by attaching lead wires to the lower indium electrode and the upper Au electrode. The power generation characteristics of the solar cell element of Example 2. The current-voltage characteristics were measured while irradiating simulated sunlight. It can be seen that a solar cell element having an open-circuit voltage of 0.34 V, a short-circuit current of 4.7 μA, and a maximum output of 0.98 μW is manufactured. The conversion efficiency is about 0.5% and the fill factor is 61%. The graph which shows the wavelength dependence of the irradiation light of the short circuit current at the time of irradiating the light split into the solar cell element of Example 2. FIG. In order to clarify the energy level, the emission characteristics of the same sample are also shown. When the power generation characteristics depending on the wavelength were measured by irradiating the photovoltaic power generation element with the light dispersed in FIG. It was clearly observed that the power generation effect caused by the GaAs quantum dots was observed. This proves that the light absorbed by the quantum dots generates additional power compared to the case where only the AlGaAs layer is used, and contributes to higher efficiency.

In the following examples, the solar cell is targeted as an example where the features of the present invention can be most utilized, but the lattice matching system quantum dot stacking technique is applicable to other optical system elements, For example, it can be effectively used in a light sensing element, a light emitting element, and the like.
In the present invention, the lattice constant difference between the base semiconductor material and the quantum dot material is preferably reduced as the total number of layers to be stacked increases. When the number of layers is large, the difference in lattice constant between the base material and the quantum dot material is preferably 0.5% or less.
When quantum dots having a lattice constant difference exceeding this are stacked, defects such as dislocations are formed in the upper layer, and the device characteristics deteriorate. At least a combination of materials in which the difference in lattice constant between the base material and the quantum dots is less than this is regarded as a system free from lattice distortion.
When stacking quantum dots, the numerical value of the lattice constant difference that can be tolerated to prevent the introduction of defects or the like due to lattice distortion due to lattice mismatch is roughly estimated by the method used in Non-Patent Document 7. Can be derived. This document describes a method for estimating a layer thickness that can be deposited without causing defects such as dislocations when materials having different lattice constants are deposited on a base material. As an example, let us consider a case where quantum dots of a material B (lattice constant is b) are stacked on a substrate of a material A (lattice constant is a) across an intermediate layer of A. As a typical example, the quantum dot layer is 2 nm per layer, and the intermediate layer is 10 nm. Estimating the lattice strain caused by the accumulated lattice mismatch is considered to be an average of the intermediate layer and the quantum dot layer, and 60 layers having a thickness of 12 nm and a lattice constant (a × 10 + b × 2) / 12 are substantially obtained. It can be considered to be laminated. As a result, the lattice mismatch (lattice constant difference) allowed for the aforementioned layer is about 0.09%. Therefore, the lattice mismatch with respect to a allowed for the lattice constant b of the quantum dot is about 0.5%.

In Example 1, GaAs / AlGaAs was used as the material system, but the droplet epitaxy method can be applied to any system as long as the group III element is a low melting point metal and is a lattice matching system. (1) GaAs (lattice constant: 0.565 nm) / Al _x Ga _1-x As (0 <× ≦ 1) (lattice constant: 0.565 to 0.566 nm), (2) GaAs (lattice constant: 0. 565 nm) / Al _0.49 In _0.51 P (lattice constant: 0.565 nm), (3) GaAs (lattice constant: 0.565 nm) / Ga _0.51 In _0.49 P (lattice constant: 0.566 nm) ), (4) Ga _0.47 In _0.53 As (lattice constant: 0.584 nm) / InP (lattice constant: 0.587 nm), (5) Ga _0.47 In _0.53 As (lattice constant: 0) .584 nm) / Al _{The same} applies to material systems such as _0.48 In _0.52 As (lattice constant: 0.587 nm). The lattice mismatch in these combinations is (1) 0 to 0.13%, (2) 0%, (3) 0.03%, (4) 0.4%, (5) 0. 4%.
The quantum dots of Example 1 were fabricated on a GaAs (100) substrate. However, as described in Patent Document 5 and Non-Patent Document 6, the GaAs (311) A surface, the GaAs (111) A surface, and the like. It is clear that a lattice-matched quantum dot can be produced in the same manner when using other surfaces.
Further, in Example 2, an example of growth by molecular beam epitaxy was shown. However, an element can be manufactured by an apparatus capable of high-quality epitaxial growth, and the same result can be expected in the metal organic vapor phase epitaxy method.

The principle of the present invention will be described by taking as an example a solar cell using a structure in which lattice-matched self-formed quantum dots are embedded in a host material as shown in FIG. 8 as an active layer for light detection.
The base material has a larger band gap energy than the quantum dots.
When this structure is irradiated with light having a higher energy than that of the base material, the structure is mainly absorbed by the base layer to generate electron / hole pairs.
Light with energy between the quantum dot and the band gap of the host material is absorbed through the quantum dot and produces an electron-hole pair. Thereafter, these electrons and holes are extracted into the base material by further (1) light absorption, (2) excitation by heat, and (3) tunnel effect.
Once the electrons and holes that have moved into the base material have a low probability of re-releasing to quantum dots due to the phonon bottleneck effect, they can be efficiently extracted as current.
The photodetecting layer includes a pn junction solar cell having a p-i-n structure or a n-i-p structure, or a Schottky connection solar cell structure having a ni-metal or a pi-metal. The electrons and holes generated there are taken out from the electrodes as currents.

In Example 2 below, a laminated structure of 10 layers was produced. As shown in Example 1, the quantum dots are perfectly lattice-matched with the base material, and the number of laminated layers can be increased without limitation.
In Example 3, since a simple element was produced in order to simplify the test, the element efficiency of the solar cell was 0.5%.
I light loss due to translucent electrode,
II Voltage loss due to Schottky solar cells,
III Light loss due to surface reflection,
IV Current loss due to surface recombination of carriers,
V Loss of light due to insufficient total number of quantum dots.
The solution of these problems is a matter that can be easily performed with common technical knowledge already in practical use, and details thereof are omitted. However, by applying these conventional techniques to Example 2 below, theoretical efficiency can be improved. Near power generation efficiency can be obtained.
In Example 3, the contribution of power generation by quantum dots was 1/10 to 1/100 compared to the base material. From the fact that the number of stacks made unlimited in Example 1 is unlimited, for example, quantum This indicates that the power generation efficiency at the same level as that of the base material can be realized by increasing the number of dot stacks from 100 layers to 1000 layers.

(Example of lattice-matched quantum dot fabrication)
An example of manufacturing lattice-matched self-assembled quantum dots is shown. As a material system, GaAs quantum dots / Al _0.3 Ga _0.7 As having almost no lattice mismatch were used. As a lattice matching quantum dot fabrication method, the droplet epitaxy method described in Non-Patent Document 5, Patent Document 4, and Patent Document 5 was used. A schematic diagram of the droplet epitaxy method is shown in FIG. Quantum dots were formed on AlGaAs grown on a GaAs (100) substrate (2 inch substrate manufactured by AXT) using a commercially available solid source molecular beam epitaxy apparatus (32 system manufactured by RIBER, France).
First, at a substrate temperature of 200 ° C., only Ga (purity 8N) is converted into GaAs and supplied in a 5-molecular layer equivalent. As a result, Ga droplets are formed. Subsequently, an arsenic molecular beam (purity: 7N) having an intensity of 5 × 10 ⁻⁵ Torr is irradiated to crystallize the droplets into GaAs quantum dots. In order to improve the crystallinity, the temperature is raised to 400 degrees as it is and heat treatment is performed.
From the atomic force microscope image (FIG. 10) of the quantum dots at this point, it was confirmed that quantum dots with a density of 3 × 10 ¹⁰ / cm ² were formed.
Subsequently, the quantum dots are embedded with AlGaAs. After growing 10 nm AlGaAs at 400 degrees and completely embedding the quantum dots, the substrate temperature is further increased to 580 degrees to grow the remaining AlGaAs.

FIG. 11 shows a cross-sectional scanning transmission electron microscope image of a structure in which two layers of GaAs quantum dots produced by droplet epitaxy are stacked and embedded in AlGaAs. From the lattice image, formation of defects or the like was not observed, and formation of quantum dots having good crystallinity was confirmed. Since no defect or the like is formed, it is obvious that this GaAs quantum dot and Al _0.35 Ga _0.65 As (x = 0.35) have lattice constants of 0.565 nm and 0.566 nm, which are physical property values, respectively. The lattice constant difference is 0.04%. Since there is almost no difference in lattice constant, the displacement of lattice points (that is, lattice distortion) cannot be observed in this electron microscope image.

(Example of solar cell structure production)
A solar cell element in which 10 layers of the quantum dot structure shown in FIG. 10 were laminated was produced. A schematic diagram of the element is shown in FIG. The element is a Schottky connection type solar cell of ni metal. The growth was performed using a solid source molecular beam epitaxy apparatus. The element structure is as shown in FIG.
As the substrate, highly doped n-type GaAs (AXT 2 inch substrate) was used. After growing an n-type GaAs buffer layer of 200 nm and an n-type Al _0.3 Ga _0.7 As layer of 500 nm under general molecular beam epitaxy growth conditions, an active layer for light detection was grown.
The active layer was formed by stacking 10 layers of GaAs quantum dots introduced into the 500 nm-thick non-doped Al _0.3 Ga _0.7 As layer by droplet epitaxy in the same manner as in Example 1.
The interval between the introduced quantum dots is an Al _0.3 Ga _0.7 As layer of 16 nm. Finally, a 20 nm GaAs cap layer is grown to prevent oxidation of the entire Al _0.3 Ga _0.7 As active layer. After the growth, annealing is performed at 800 degrees for 4 minutes in order to improve crystallinity.
After epitaxial growth using a conventionally known molecular beam epitaxy apparatus, an electrode was formed by vacuum deposition, and a solar cell element was prototyped. The lower electrode was in ohmic contact using indium. On the upper part, a semitransparent electrode (total film thickness 10 nm) was formed on the entire surface by NiCr + Au, and then an Au pad for contact was formed. In this element, the light receiving portion has a diameter of 500 microns (the area is 0.002 cm ² ). A photograph of the produced solar cell element is shown in FIG.

(Characteristics of solar cell element of Example 2)
The device of Example 2 was irradiated with pseudo-sunlight (AM1.5) from a solar simulator (manufactured by Yamashita Denso) to measure photovoltaic power. From FIG. 14 showing the current-voltage characteristics of the element when light irradiation is on and off, it was confirmed that the solar cell element had an open circuit voltage of 0.34 V, a short-circuit current of 4.7 μA, and a maximum output of 0.98 μW. The conversion efficiency is about 0.5% and the fill factor is 61%.

Subsequently, in order to verify the power generation effect of the quantum dot layer, the device was irradiated with the dispersed light, and the current resulting from the absorption of the quantum dots was confirmed. In the experiment, a halogen lamp (70 W) was dispersed with a spectrometer (CT-25 manufactured by JASCO Corporation) and irradiated on the sample. The irradiation intensity per point is about several nW. For comparison, an emission spectrum measured at room temperature is shown together in FIG. When light having a wavelength of 650 nm or less is irradiated, light is absorbed mainly by the Al _0.3 Ga _0.7 As layer, and a power generation effect is generated.
The current value at this time is about 1 nA. A clear electromotive force was also generated when light having a wavelength of 650 nm or more was irradiated. This indicates that an electromotive force is generated by the light absorbed in the quantum dot layer. By introducing the quantum dot, the absorbable wavelength is extended to the long wavelength side, and high efficiency can be realized. It was confirmed. The value of the short circuit current is about 0.01 nA to 0.1 nA. The current derived from the quantum dots has a low value because the number of stacked layers is as small as ten.

JP2002-141531 JP 2006-114815 A Patent publication 2007-519237 JP 2006-060088 JP 2009-016709 A

A. Marti, N. Lopez et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. Vol. 90, 233510, 2007. Okada, Journal of Japanese Society for Crystal Growth Vol. 33, No.2, p. 89, 2006 H. Sakaki, K. Kato et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. Vol. 57, 2800, 1990. A. Marti, E. Antolin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. Vol. 97, 247701, 2006. K. Watanabe, N. Koguchi et al., Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Vol. 39, L79, 2000 J. S. Kim, M. S. Jeong et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. Vol. 88, 241911, 2006. J. W. Matthews and A. E. Blanleslee, J. Crystal Growth Vol. 27, 118, 1974

Claims (5)

  An optical element having an active layer in which a layer into which quantum dots are introduced is multilayered, wherein the active layer has no lattice distortion due to lattice mismatch.   2. The optical element according to claim 1, wherein the quantum dots of the active layer and the base material into which the quantum dots are made of a material having a lattice constant of 0.5% or less.   3. The photosensitive element according to claim 1, wherein the base material into which the active layer quantum dots are introduced has a larger band gap energy than the material constituting the quantum dots of the active layer.   A solar cell in which electrodes are arranged above and below an active layer. The active layer consists of the active layer in any one of Claim 1 to 3, The semiconductor solar cell characterized by the above-mentioned. 5. The solar cell according to claim 4, wherein the quantum dots of the active layer are made of GaAs, and the matrix is made of Al _x Ga _1-x As (0 <x ≦ 1).