A New Solar Cell Model for Evaluating Degradation of various il icon Cells at LEO and eO r its

In this paper a new solar cell model is presented. The model is used for evaluating the performance of various silicon solar cells in LEO and GEO. Irradiance, temperature, and accumulated dose of radiation are considered as the model´s input parameters. In this research, some types of terrestrial and space-qualified silicon solar cells are investigated and evaluated. N-type-base and poly crystalline silicon are selected as terrestrial solar cells. High Efficiency Silicon (HES) cells are selected as space-qualified solar cells. The selected HES cells are bulk single-crystal silicon solar cells with 2 ohm-cm base resistivity and different cell thicknesses (2 mil and 4 mil). End Of Life (EOL) conditions for LEO and GEO orbits are assumed to be equivalent to degradation due to lMeV electron fluences of 1e15 and 5e14 e/cm², respectively. It is finally concluded that radiation sensitivity of poly crystalline silicon solar cell is very close to HES cell, but it has lower generated power. Also, N-type-base silicon solar cell is the most radiation sensitive cell with the lowest generated power at EOL, while HES solar cell is the least radiation sensitive cell with the highest generated power at EOL.