Novel Concepts for High-Efficiency Lightweight Space Solar Cells

Cappelluti, Federica; Ghione, Giovanni; Gioannini, Mariangela; Bauhuis, G.J.; Mulder, P.; Schermer, J.J.; Cimino, Marco; Gervasio, Giuseppe; Bissels, G.M.M.W.; Katsia, E.; Aho, Timo; Niemi, Tapio; Guina, Mircea; Kim, Dongyoung; Wu, Jiang; Liu, Huiyun

doi:10.1051/e3sconf/20171603007

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…By removing the Ge wafer, structures such as the tandem thin‐film InGaP/GaAs solar cells appear to be promising for space solar arrays. The removal of the substrate also allows access to the rear contact, resulting in the development of new architectures . Owing to the possibility of applying a back reflector, thin‐film devices require smaller active layer thicknesses, further reducing costs related to both the weight and the growth of the epitaxial layers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on the hypothesis that the permanent displacement damage produced by the incidence of charged particles is the main aspect that degrades the device performance in space, the mission equivalent damage from electrons, protons, ions, and neutrons of different energies can be averaged by a certain electron fluence. [30][31][32][33] Geostationary orbit missions (GEO) usually last for 15 years, and the damage created by the irradiation environment is equivalent to that obtained by a fluence of 1 × 10 15 1-MeV electrons/cm 2 . For low earth orbit (LEO) missions, which last for approximate 10 years at a lower altitude, the equivalent fluences are five to 10 times lower.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Electron radiation–induced degradation of GaAs solar cells with different architectures

Gruginskie

Cappelluti

Bauhuis

et al. 2020

Progress in Photovoltaics

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The effects of electron irradiation on the performance of GaAs solar cells with a range of architectures is studied. Solar cells with shallow and deep junction designs processed on the native wafer as well as into a thin‐film were irradiated by 1‐MeV electrons with fluence up to 1×1015 e−/cm2. The degradation of the cell performance due to irradiation was studied experimentally and theoretically using model simulations, and a coherent set of minority carriers' lifetime damage constants was derived. The solar cell performance degradation primarily depends on the junction depth and the thickness of the active layers, whereas the material damage shows to be insensitive to the cell architecture and fabrication steps. The modeling study has pointed out that besides the reduction of carriers lifetime, the electron irradiation strongly affects the quality of hetero‐interfaces, an effect scarcely addressed in the literature. It is demonstrated that linear increase with the electron fluence of the surface recombination velocity at the front and rear hetero‐interfaces of the solar cell accurately describes the degradation of the spectral response and of the dark current characteristic upon irradiation. A shallow junction solar cell processed into a thin‐film device has the lowest sensitivity to electron radiation, showing an efficiency at the end of life equivalent to 82% of the beginning‐of‐life efficiency.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Electron radiation–induced degradation of GaAs solar cells with different architectures

Gruginskie

Cappelluti

Bauhuis

et al. 2020

Progress in Photovoltaics

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“…This is well known for single-junction GaAs cells and may be expected to have a similar role in QD solar cells. In [50] we have shown through physics-based simulations that under the hypothesis of very efficient photon recycling, QD-SCs might reach efficiency higher than 30%. However, from a practical standpoint, whereas in a single-junction GaAs cell a planar reflector is sufficient to achieve strong photon recycling (since photons are re-emitted isotropically), the QD cell needs at the same time texturing of the solar cell surface(s) for lighttrapping.…”

Section: Photonic Management Approaches Through Cell Nanostructuringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light-trapping enhanced thin-film III-V quantum dot solar cells fabricated by epitaxial lift-off

Cappelluti

Kim

Eerden³

et al. 2018

Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

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We report thin-film InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) solar cells with n − i − p + deep junction structure and planar back reflector fabricated by epitaxial lift-off (ELO) of full 3-inch wafers. External quantum efficiency measurements demonstrate twofold enhancement of the QD photocurrent in the ELO QD cell compared to the wafer-based QD cell. In the GaAs wavelength range, the ELO QD cell perfectly preserves the current collection efficiency of the baseline single-junction ELO cell. We demonstrate by full-wave optical simulations that integrating a micro-patterned diffraction grating in the ELO cell rearside provides more than tenfold enhancement of the near-infrared light harvesting by QDs. Experimental results are thoroughly discussed with the help of physics-based simulations to single out the impact of QD dynamics and defects on the cell photovoltaic behavior. It is demonstrated that non radiative recombination in the QD stack is the bottleneck for the open circuit voltage (V oc ) of the reported devices. More important, our theoretical calculations demonstrate that the V oc offest of 0.3 V from the QD ground state identified by Tanabe et al., 2012, from a collection of experimental data of high quality III-V QD solar cells is a reliable -albeit conservative -metric to gauge the attainable V oc and to quantify the scope for improvement by reducing non radiative recombination. Provided that material quality issues are solved, we demonstrate -by transport and rigorous electromagnetic simulations -that light-trapping enhanced thin-film cells with twenty InAs/GaAs QD layers reach efficiency higher than 28% under unconcentrated light, ambient temperature. If photon recycling can be fully exploited, 30% efficiency is deemed to be feasible.

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“…This approach enables fabrication of very thin solar cells, which would be beneficial e.g. for space and unmanned aerial vehicle applications [16,17]. As the simplest approach for improving the absorption, highly reflective planar back reflectors could effectively double the length of the optical path, increasing the J sc .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of metal/polymer back reflectors with half-sphere, blazed, and pyramid gratings for light trapping in III-V solar cells

Aho¹,

Guina²,

Elsehrawy³

et al. 2018

Opt. Express

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We report on the fabrication of diffraction gratings for application as back contact reflectors. The gratings are designed for thin-film solar cells incorporating absorbers with bandgap slightly lower than GaAs, i.e. InAs quantum dot or GaInNAs solar cells. Light trapping in the solar cells enables the increase of the absorption leading to higher short circuit current densities and higher efficiencies. We study metal/polymer back reflectors with half-sphere, blazed, and pyramid gratings, which were fabricated either by photolithography or by nanoimprint lithography. The gratings are compared in terms of the total and the specular reflectance, which determine their diffraction capabilities, i.e. the feature responsible for increasing the absorption. The pyramid grating showed the highest diffuse reflection of light compared to the half-sphere structure and the blazed grating. The diffraction efficiency measurements were in agreement with the numerical simulations. The validated model enables designing such metal/polymer back reflectors for other type of solar cells by refining the optimal dimensions of the gratings for different wavelength ranges.

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Novel Concepts for High-Efficiency Lightweight Space Solar Cells

Cited by 13 publications

References 20 publications

Electron radiation–induced degradation of GaAs solar cells with different architectures

Electron radiation–induced degradation of GaAs solar cells with different architectures

Light-trapping enhanced thin-film III-V quantum dot solar cells fabricated by epitaxial lift-off

Comparison of metal/polymer back reflectors with half-sphere, blazed, and pyramid gratings for light trapping in III-V solar cells

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