Emitter design for high‐efficiency silicon solar cells. Part 2: Space cells

Abstract
Over the last decade there have been substantial improvements in the performance of silicon solar cells. This second part of a two‐part paper examines the implications for use in space. High‐efficiency cells, including cells of above 20% Air Mass 0 efficiency were exposed to 1 MeV of electron irradiation. Although the relative performance loss was higher, the cells gave higher performance than conventional silicon space cells even after 5 × 1015cm−21‐MeV electron radiation damage. However, spectral response measurement shows that the rapid degradation mainly came from damage on the emitter surface. This can be accommodated simply by shallow emitter designs. the efficiency of an optimized silicon space cell is expected to be over 14% after 1 × 1015cm−21 MeV electron radiation.

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