Improvements to solar cell efficiency and radiation hardness that are compatible with low cost, high volume manufacturing processes are critical for power generation applications in future long-term NASA and DOD space missions. In this paper, we provide the results of numerical simulation of the radiation effects in a novel, ultra-thin (UT), Si photovoltaic cell technology that combines enhanced light trapping (LT) and absorption due to nanostructured surfaces, separation of photogenerated carriers by carrier selective contacts (CSC), and increased carrier density due to multiple exciton generation (MEG). Such solar cells have a potential to achieve high conversion efficiencies while shown to be rad-hard, lightweight, flexible, and low–cost, due to the use of Si high volume techniques.

Date Published: 16 March 2015
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 9358, Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices IV, 93580N (16 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2081064

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9358:
Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices IV
Alexandre Freundlich; Jean-François Guillemoles; Masakazu Sugiyama, Editor(s)