Numerical simulation of the temperature distortions in InGaP/GaAs/Ge solar cells working under high concentrating conditions due to voids presence in the solder joint

Abstract

The presence of voids in solar cell solder joints causes a modification of the heat fluxes inside the device during its operation, which in turn leads to local increases in cell temperature and thermal resistance. These temperature increases at device surface lead to a modification of the photovoltaic cell voltage map which translates in a drop in cell output power. Moreover, for pv cells working under high concentration conditions such as III–V multi-junction solar cells for terrestrial application, very high temperature increases can arise as a consequence of void presence, both above the void volume and around it, leading in extreme cases to irreversible damages of the device. In this paper a matlab script is implemented to assess the temperature increase at the top surface of a InGaP/GaAs/Ge solar cell, in the device regions lying outside the void coverage area, for different void sizes found in concentrator solar cells. The obtained results are compared to those of finite element method (FEM) simulations, which are based on an equivalent 2.5 D thermal representation of the cell. A good agreement between FEM simulations and the developed thermal model is observed for small and medium size voids, while for larger voids the error between FEM simulations and the developed model becomes not-negligible. An analytical expression is obtained to assess the device thermal resistance in presence of a random distribution on not-interacting voids. The developed model can be used as starting point to assess the influence of void presence on the power performances of InGaP/GaAs/Ge multi-junction solar cells working under high concentrating conditions.