Radiation hard and gravimetric efficient thin film InP solar cells

Author

Sun, Yanning ; Woodall, Jerry M. ; Freeout, J.L. ; Walters, Robert J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Yale Univ., New Haven, CT, USA

fYear

2002

fDate

19-24 May 2002

Firstpage

994

Lastpage

997

Abstract

We present characterization results of advanced prototypes of InP based thin film solar cells designed to be gravimetrically efficient (high power to weight ratio), and radiation hardened, especially with respect to operations in orbits flie in the "van Allen Belt", i.e. at an altitude of 3200km, where the radiation is extremely intense. Our specially designed cells help achieve high radiation resistance by collecting photogenerated carriers by drift due to the electrical fields rather than by usual carrier diffusion associated with normal p-n junction solar cells. High-energy particle irradiation damage to this thin film InP cells has been studied. The result shows that the short circuit current is not affected by high fluence of 1-MeV proton irradiation.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; carrier density; carrier mobility; indium compounds; proton effects; radiation hardening (electronics); semiconductor thin films; solar cells; 1-MeV proton irradiation; InP; carrier diffusion; gravimetric efficient thin film InP solar cells; high power to weight ratio; high radiation resistance; photogenerated carriers; radiation hard thin film InP solar cells; short circuit current; van Allen Belt; Belts; Electric resistance; Indium phosphide; Orbits; P-n junctions; Photovoltaic cells; Prototypes; Radiation hardening; Thin film circuits; Transistors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2002. Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth IEEE

ISSN

1060-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7471-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2002.1190772

Filename

1190772