Electric orbit raising increases the radiation dose for space solar arrays significantly. This leads to the need for a more radiation resistant, highly efficient space solar cell. We propose a new wafer-bonded 4-junction structure which allows reaching begin-of-life efficiencies up to 34.7% (AMO) and efficiencies up to 30.8% (AMO) after 1*1015 cm−2 1-MeV electron irradiation. The high radiation hardness is a result of specific material properties of InP-rich compounds which benefit from significant defect annealing under typical operating conditions in space. A new four-j unction space solar cell, based on high InP fractions containing GaInAsP and Ge is currently under development in the EU project RadHard and first devices achieve an efficiency of 21.4% (AM0) before irradiation. After irradiation, as expected, a strong annealing effect after 3 days at AM0 & 60°C is found for this device. Already at this early development stage 78% of the end of life open circuit target voltage of 3.09 V under AM0 has been reached.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Radiation hard four-junction space solar cell based on GaInAsP alloys


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2019-09-01


    Size :

    335061 byte




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




    FOUR JUNCTION SOLAR CELL AND SOLAR CELL ASSEMBLIES FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS

    DERKACS DANIEL / BITTNER ZACHARY / WHIPPLE SAMANTHA et al. | European Patent Office | 2018

    Free access

    A monolithic three-terminal GaInAsP/GaInAs tandem solar cell

    SCHULTZ, P.WESLEY | Online Contents | 2009


    Four-Junction Wafer Bonded Solar Cells for Space Applications

    Siefer, Gerald / Beutel, Paul / Lackner, David et al. | IEEE | 2019


    Radiation hard InGaAsP solar cell for multijunction solar cells

    Khan, A. / Yamaguchi, M. / Dharmarasu, N. et al. | Tema Archive | 2001