Advanced Silicon Solar Cell Structures for Space Applications

This paper reviews the advanced solar cell structures used in space. These are the structures which incorporate the back surface field and reflectors with very shallow and lightly doped emitters. Their use in space has shown that the thinner cells are more resistive to radiation damage than the thicker ones. It has been found that the charged particles affect both the surface and bulk of the cells used in space. This causes degradation in the output power, which in effect, can be explained by the degrading diffusion length of the cells. The PERL cells showed higher BOL(beginning of life) efficiency and almost the same EOL(end of life) efficiency as structures with wrap-around contact configuration fabricated on 10 ${\Omega}cm$ resistivity substrates. This observation lead to a conclusion that, the space cells do not necessarily need to have very high BOL efficiency except in specific missions which require such.