Intrinsic radiation tolerance of ultra-thin GaAs solar cells

Radiation tolerance is a critical performance criterion of photovoltaic devices for space power applications. In this paper we demonstrate the intrinsic radiation tolerance of an ultra-thin solar cell geometry. Device characteristics of GaAs solar cells with absorber layer thicknesses 80 nm and 800 nm were compared before and after 3 MeV proton irradiation. Both cells showed a similar degradation in Voc with increasing fluence; however, the 80 nm cell showed no degradation in Isc for fluences up to 1014 p+ cm−2. For the same exposure, the Isc of the 800 nm cell had severely degraded leaving a remaining factor of 0.26.