The potential to cheaply produce gallium arsenide (GaAs) thin-film solar cells came a step closer to reality with the discovery of a way to reuse a surface on which the cells are made.   The findings are detailed in a paper newly published in the journal Joule, “Germanium-on-Nothing Technology for Epitaxial Liftoff of GaAs Solar Cells,” written by researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and from the Republic of Korea. One of the co-authors...