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

Meihua Fang,Huiping Liu,Hongbo Lu,Ronghui Quan,Tao Fei,Mengying Bai,Jingpeng Lv,Yipan Guo

doi:10.1155/2020/3082835

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.

Highlights

Space radiation produced damage in solar cells, which will limit the capability and lifetime of satellites
Continuous annealing means that solar cells are radiated at a high temperature that the defects are produced by irradiation and recovered by thermal annealing simultaneously
The samples used in this work are GaAs/Ge single-junction solar cells manufactured by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD)

Summary

Introduction

Space radiation produced damage in solar cells, which will limit the capability and lifetime of satellites. It is clear that interactions between energetic particles and nucleus result displacement damage and induce lattice defects in materials. Defects in semiconductor material can be recovered via thermal annealing. Continuous annealing means that solar cells are radiated at a high temperature that the defects are produced by irradiation and recovered by thermal annealing simultaneously. Some results show that continuous annealing could reduce the concentration of defects above a certain temperature [13, 18]. It is necessary to consider the effect of temperature on radiation defects when studying the radiation degradation of solar cells. Based on the defect concentration, the simulation of short-circuit current during the annealing process was in good agreement with the experimental results

Experimental

Results and Discussion

Conclusion