Radiation effects on solar cells: experiments, models, and simulations: DLTS vs. SRIM for trap data

Abstract

A predictive computational approach that limits use of DLTS experiments is presented, developed using the experimental data and proposed physics based models. Three-dimensional NanoTCAD simulations are used for physicsbased prediction of space radiation effects in III-V solar cells, and validated with experimentally measured characteristics of a p+n GaAs solar cell with AlGaAs window. The computed dark and illuminated I-V curves as well as corresponding performance parameters matched very well experimental data for 2 MeV proton irradiation at various fluences. We analyze the role of majority vs. minority and deep vs. shallow carrier traps in the solar cell performance degradation. The traps/defects parameters used in the simulations were derived from Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS) data obtained at NRL. It was noticed that the degradation caused by deep traps observed in single-trap numerical tests exhibit a very similar trend to the degradation caused by a full spectrum of defect traps, but to a lesser degree. This led to the development of a method to accurately simulate the degradation of a solar cell by using only a single deep level defect whose density is calculated by the Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter (SRIM) code. Using SRIM, we calculated the number of vacancies produced by 2 MeV proton irradiation for fluences ranging from 6x1010 cm-2 to 5x1012 cm-2. Based on the SRIM results, we applied trap models in NanoTCAD and performed full I-V simulations from which the amount of degradation of performance parameters (Isc, Voc, Pmax) was calculated. The physics-based models using SRIM allowed obtaining good match with experimental data.