Annealing Effects on GaAs/Ge Solar Cell after 150 keV Proton Irradiation

Abstract

Radiation-induced defects are responsible for solar cell degradation. The effects of radiation and annealing on the defects of a GaAs/Ge solar cell are modeled and analyzed in this paper. The electrical performance and spectral response of solar cells irradiated with 150 keV proton are examined. Then, thermal annealing was carried out at 120°C. We found that the proportion of defect recovery after annealing decreases with increasing irradiation fluence. The minority carrier lifetime increases with decreasing defect concentration, which means that the electrical performance of the solar cell is improved. We calculated the defect concentration and minority carrier lifetime with numerical simulation and modeled an improved annealing kinetic equation with experimental results.

Correlation between Structural Evolution and Device Performance of CH3NH3PbI3 Solar Cells under Proton Irradiation

“…The short-circuit current density ( J SC ) associated with the defect concentration in materials increased with elapsed time, , indicating that point defects such as vacancies and interstitial atoms in the active layer induced by irradiation had achieved self-healing owing to the migration of ions or atoms . This type of recovery mechanism also exists in traditional silicon-based and III–V compound solar cells. − Furthermore, the evolution trend of J SC and fill factor (FF) can be divided into two stages. In the first stage ( t = 0–20 h), the recovery speed of J SC was faster than that of FF, while it was opposite in the second stage ( t > 20 h), which was the result of defect recovery at different locations.…”

A Brief Review of High Efficiency III-V Solar Cells for Space Application

“…The researchers aimed at improving the radiation resistance of solar cells by adding a certain thickness of protective cover to the solar cell to shield the damage of certain particles [23], using back-surface (BSF) [24] or distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) [25], and thinning the base layer thickness of the current-limiting subcell [26], or using the p-i-n structure and different doping methods for multi-junction solar cells [27]. The experimental observations show that annealing of the multi-junction solar cell can restore certain electrical properties after being radiated by high-energy particles [28].…”