Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Brinker, D..
AM0 solar cell calibration laboratories throughout the world are working together to create standard methods for AM0 calibration. In an effort to compare the results of different calibration methods, five different laboratories calibrated GaAs and Si solar cells. The results of this inter-comparison are presented herein.
Recent advances in space solar cell technology have produced substantial increases in Air mass Zero (AM0) efficiency.
Temperature coefficients measured in solar simulators with those measured under AM0 solar illumination are compared to illustrate the challenges in making these measurements. It is shown that simulator measurements of the short-circuit current (delta Jsc/delta T) are inaccurate due to the mismatch between the solar spectrum and the simulators at the bandgaps of the solar cells. Especially susceptible to error is the delta Jsc/delta T of cells which are components in monolithic multijunction solar cells, such as GaAs filtered by 1.93-eV AlGaAs, which has an AM0 coefficient of 6.82 micro-A/sq cm/deg C, compared to a Xenon simulator coefficient of 22.2 micro-A/sq cm/deg C.
A solar cell structure is proposed which uses a GaAs nipi doping superlattice. An important feature of this structure is that photogenerated minority carriers are very quickly collected in a time shorter than bulk lifetime in the fairly heavily doped n and p layers and these carriers are then transported parallel to the superlattice layers to selective ohmic contacts. Assuming that these already-separated carriers have very long recombination lifetimes, due to their across an indirect bandgap in real space, it is argued that the proposed structure may exhibit superior radiation tolerance along with reasonably high beginning-of-life efficiency.