Radiation hard, double-graded, drift-dominated InP solar cells

Author

Sun, Yarning ; Woodall, Jerry M. ; Warne, Jeffrey H. ; Walters, Robert J. ; Freeouf, John L. ; Yulius, Aristo ; Li, Guohua

Author_Institution

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

Volume

1

fYear

2003

fDate

18-18 May 2003

Firstpage

726

Abstract

Double-graded and drift-dominated InP solar cells have been designed, fabricated and characterized. By grading the doping concentration in both the emitter and the base of the InP solar cell, we create an electric field through the active layer, and thus efficiently collect carriers by drift which results in higher than 80% overall internal quantum efficiency. By adding an InP P/sup ++/ delta doped layer, we eliminate the depletion region between the substrate and the epitaxial layers, thereby reducing the series resistance and improving cell quality. The power remaining factor after 10/sup 15/ electrons/cm/sup 2/ 1 MeV electron irradiation is 93.7%. The results indicate that our design promises to result in a gravimetrically efficient and radiation hard space solar cell.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; electron beam effects; indium compounds; radiation hardening (electronics); semiconductor doping; semiconductor epitaxial layers; solar cells; InP; P/sup ++/ delta doped layer; cell quality; depletion region; doping concentration; double-graded solar cell; drift-dominated solar cell; electron irradiation; hard space solar cell; overall internal quantum efficiency; series resistance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, 2003. Proceedings of 3rd World Conference on

Conference_Location

Osaka, Japan

Print_ISBN

4-9901816-0-3

Type

conf

Filename

1305385