SIMULATIONS ON 1-MeV ELECTRON-BEAM IRRADIATED AMORPHOUS SILICON SOLAR CELLS WITH VARYING THICKNESS

摘要

To use solar cells for space applications it is important to be able to predict the End-of-Life (EOL) performance of the cell. To create a model to predict this EOL performance, quantitative information about degradation mechanisms is needed. In this paper we show quantum efficiency (QE) simulations and experimental results for high-energy electron beam irradiated solar cells. To study the depth dependence of the defect creation, solar cells with a varying i-layer thickness were irradiated. The changes in the QE are attributed to changes in the defect density of states of the material, which is linked to recombination processes in the material. Using this approach we are able to obtain a good match between the experimental and simulated QE results.