Mechanisms for Radiation Resistance of InP Photovoltaic Cells: A First Principle Study

Abstract

Herein, the mechanisms for radiation resistance of InP are investigated using first‐principle computational methods. It is found that the substantial recovery of post‐irradiated solar cells is attributed to the minority‐carrier‐injection‐enhanced annealing of the negative‐U defects, phosphorus vacancies, which produce the (0/−) and (+/0) level corresponding to the deep‐level transient spectroscopy signature H4 and E11, respectively. P vacancies can annihilate with P interstitials at low temperature, where by alternately capturing carrier with opposite sign P, interstitials become highly mobile upon minority‐carrier injection. By such Bourgoin diffusion mechanism, the calculated barrier for P interstitial migration and P Frenkel pair recombination are lowered to 0.04 and 0.16 eV, respectively. The results agree fairy well with experimental observations.