Gold and gold-based alloys, commonly used as solar-cell contact materials, are known to react readily with gallium arsenide. Experiments designed to identify the mechanisms involved in these GaAs-metal interactions have yielded several interesting results. It is shown that the reaction of GaAs with gold takes place via a dissociative diffusion process. It is shown further that the GaAs-metal reaction rate is controlled to a very great extent by the condition of the free surface of the contact metal, an interesting example of which is the previously unexplained increase in the reaction rate that has been observed for samples annealed in a vacuum environment as compared to those annealed in a gaseous ambient. A number of other hard-to-explain observations, such as the low-temperature formation of voids in the gold lattice and crystallite growth on the gold surface, are also explained by invoking this mechanism.

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We present electron and proton radiation data for our GaInP2/GaAs/Ge triple‐junction solar cell. An analysis of the data is also done with both the relative damage coefficients (RDC) method developed at NASA‐JPL, as well as the displacement damage dose (D3) method developed by the Naval Research Laboratory. We also discuss radiation tolerance of cells in the light of our development of an advanced triple‐junction cell. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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