Ab initio electronic stopping power for protons in Ga _0.5 In _0.5 P/GaAs/Ge triple-junction solar cells for space applications

Abstract

Motivated by the radiation damage of solar panels in space, firstly, the results of Monte Carlo particle transport simulations are presented for proton impact on triple-junction Ga 0.5 In 0.5 P/GaAs/Ge solar cells, showing the proton projectile penetration in the cells as a function of energy. It is followed by a systematic ab initio investigation of the electronic stopping power (ESP) for protons in different layers of the cell at the relevant velocities via real-time time-dependent density functional theory calculations. The ESP is found to depend significantly on different channelling conditions, which should affect the low-velocity damage predictions, and which are understood in terms of impact parameter and electron density along the path. Additionally, we explore the effect of the interface between the layers of the multilayer structure on the energy loss of a proton, along with the effect of strain in the lattice-matched solar cell. Both effects are found to be small compared with the main bulk effect. The interface energy loss has been found to increase with decreasing proton velocity, and in one case, there is an effective interface energy gain.

Effect of electronic stopping in molecular dynamics simulations of collision cascades in gallium arsenide

“…For example, for 1 MeV As PKAs, the ESP values are 26.0, 26.5, and 27.4 eV/Å for the 001 , 011 , and 111 channels, respec- tively. This deviates from other works on materials with a similar diamondlike structure [73,74] where the wider 011 channel resulted in slightly lower ESP values than the 001 and 111 results.…”

“…The ESP values for all channeling directions are smaller than the SRIM results, as is also observed for many other materials [53,54,73,74]. We observe that the ESPs along the centers of the three channels are very similar.…”

Nonlinear electronic stopping of negatively-charged particles in liquid water

“…Recent developments in density functional theory (DFT) and its time-dependent extension (TDDFT) have advanced significantly the description of the electronic stopping processes in materials in the whole range of velocities [11]. Most of the studies are focused on solidstate materials [12][13][14][15][16][17], although, some ab initio simulations for protons in liquid water became available in recent years. Real-time (RT-) TDDFT calculations of the proton stopping in water, ice, and water vapor provide accurate results and show a quantitative agreement with available experiments [18][19][20].…”

Ab Initio Prediction of a Negative Barkas Coefficient for Slow Protons and Antiprotons in LiF

“…Famous researchers, such as Bohr [1], Bethe [2], or Lindhard [3], have developed models to quantify the energy transfer between the charged projectile and the target atoms. While tightly bound to the development of particle physics, this interaction is still key to modern applications: nuclear materials [4], radiotherapy [5], space-grade materials [6].…”