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Radiation-Resistant Solar Cells: Recent Updates and Future Prospective

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Handbook of Ecomaterials

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Abstract

The stability of a solar cell lifetime and performance in radiation harsh environments is a challenging field for today’s modern photovoltaics technology. Radiation environment, especially, charge particles (i.e., electrons or protons) presence strongly influences the performance of solar cells. Such high energy radiations are mostly used to analyze ionization/displacement damage effects in solar cells and these cannot be avoided in the space environment. Charge particle radiations can produce defects in the crystal orientation of semiconductors and the devices based on semiconductor materials. Further additional energy levels or recombination centers are introduced within the p-type or n-type materials. Ultimately, the expected performance or efficiency is disturbed in such devices or solar cells. These centers are responsible of electron-hole pairs near the mid gap. Electrons are trapped in these centers which decrease the minority carriers’ lifetime of solar cell. Ultimately electrical characteristics are changed and overall performance of solar cell is degraded. Further, different characteristics to investigate radiation effects on solar cells are discussed. Measurement of depletion layer widths can help in diagnosing radiation effects as the broadening of widths in the micrometer range occur after irradiation. Conductance method is another widely used technique to investigate the effect of density of interface centers on the efficiency of silicon solar cells. These techniques are used to measure trap time constants and to extract the density of trap centers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nano-optoelectronics Research Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Khuram Ali & Yasir Javed

Authors
  1. Khuram Ali
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  2. Yasir Javed
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Correspondence to Khuram Ali .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ingeniería Civil Facultad de Ingeniería Civil, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, Mexico

    Leticia Myriam Torres Martínez

  2. Facultad de Ciencias Físico-Matemáticas, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, San Nicolás de los Garza, Mexico

    Oxana Vasilievna Kharissova

  3. Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León UANL, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, Mexico

    Boris Ildusovich Kharisov

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Ali, K., Javed, Y. (2019). Radiation-Resistant Solar Cells: Recent Updates and Future Prospective. In: Martínez, L., Kharissova, O., Kharisov, B. (eds) Handbook of Ecomaterials. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68255-6_96

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