Improvement of efficiency of Al0.36Ga0.64As solar cells is advanced in two aspects of minority-carrier lifetime: reduction of majority-carrier concentration in the emitter and base layers, and reduction of deep levels in the back-surface-field (BSF) layer. A pp(-)n(-)n structure is proposed to optimize the use of the effect of reduced majority-carrier concentration, and its effectiveness verified in a preparatory experiment on Al0.3Ga0.7As solar cells. A very poor photoluminescence (PL) decay time (below 0.3 ns) of a BSF layer heavily doped with Si becomes 14-fold longer when Se is applied to the dopant instead of Si, resulting in an improvement of the external quantum efficiency near the absorption edge. These two aspects of this study lead to the realization of 16.6% efficiency under 1-sun, AM 1.5 global conditions with an Al0.36Ga0.64As solar cell. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.