Among III-V nitrides, the InGaN material has intensively been studied since the year 2000 for photovoltaic applications, in particular for multi-junction solar cells, thanks to its large tunable band gap covering almost the entire solar spectrum. Then, it will be possible to reach high efficiency and low cost. However, one of the problems of InGaN material is the absence of lattice-matched substrate leading to high defect density which limits device performances. We have thus studied the feasibility of single junction InGaN based solar cells on alternative substrate such as silicon and glass in order to lower the price and to benefit from their wide application fields. To adapt InGaN material on these new substrates, we have utilized ZnO buffer layer. This work has been carried out within the framework of the ANR project NewPVonGlass. More particularly, in this project, I was in charge of the electrical and optical characterizations of the materials and devices. In the two first parts of this manuscript, the InGaN material and the photovoltaic effect are introduced. Then, the characterization techniques are explained in the third chapter. In the fourth part, the results obtained during crystalline characterization of the InGaN materials are presented depending on the substrate, the indium percentage and the InGaN layer thickness. Then, the fifth chapter presents the first InGaN-based solar cell characteristics on sapphire substrate. Finally, in the last part, simulations of InGaN-based solar cell have been performed. The developed model was able to optimize the structure and to determine the critical parameters. Thus, we have shown in this work the development of an InGaN-based solar cell from the base material characterizations to the device tests, through modeling.
