Publication Date:
2016-07-23
Description:
Radiation tolerance is a critical performance criterion of photovoltaic devices for space power applications. In this paper we demonstrate the intrinsic radiation tolerance of an ultra-thin solar cell geometry. Device characteristics of GaAs solar cells with absorber layer thicknesses 80 nm and 800 nm were compared before and after 3 MeV proton irradiation. Both cells showed a similar degradation in V oc with increasing fluence; however, the 80 nm cell showed no degradation in I sc for fluences up to 10 14 p + cm −2 . For the same exposure, the I sc of the 800 nm cell had severely degraded leaving a remaining factor of 0.26.
Print ISSN:
0003-6951
Electronic ISSN:
1077-3118
Topics:
Physics
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