Strain Effects on Radiation Tolerance of Triple-Junction Solar Cells With InAs Quantum Dots in the GaAs Junction

Impact of nanostructures and radiation environment on defect levels in III–V solar cells

“…The change in E3 density could be related to compressive strain in the QD region. Kerestes et al have shown that compressive strain can lead to higher threshold energies for simple defect formation [6]. Thus, the compressive strain near the QD layers may lead to higher threshold energies making the E3 defect formation less favorable.…”

“…In addition, for potential application of these devices in a space environment, one must consider both the beginning of life (BOL) as well as the end of life (EOL) performance, where exposure to protons and electrons trapped in the Earth's magnetic field introduce numerous electronic defect states. Materials with both QWs and QDs may be attractive candidates for space applications because of their potential radiation tolerance in terms of solar cell metrics [6,7], however no reports exist that directly relate radiation induced defect states to the type of radiation exposure and fluence level.…”

Radiation effects on InAlGaAs / InGaAs quantum well solar cells

“…With no established 0.7 eV LM material available, the use of quantum confined structures embedded in a LM barrier is proposed as a means to achieve this value, while maintaining high crystalline quality. Quantum well (QW) and quantum dot (QD) structures have been previously demonstrated as bandgap engineering tools in both single junction [5,6] and multijunction cells [7][8][9]. The InAlGaAs material system used in this study is an important extension to using quantum wells for space photovoltaics since the InP-based system is relatively immature compared to its GaAs-based counterpart.…”