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. 2024 Jan 29;15(2):204.
doi: 10.3390/mi15020204.

Ultra-High Concentration Vertical Homo-Multijunction Solar Cells for CubeSats and Terrestrial Applications

Ahmad A Abushattal  1   2 , Antonio García Loureiro  1 , Nour El I Boukortt  1
Affiliations

Ultra-High Concentration Vertical Homo-Multijunction Solar Cells for CubeSats and Terrestrial Applications

Ahmad A Abushattal et al. Micromachines (Basel). .

Abstract

This paper examines advances in ultra-high concentration photovoltaics (UHCPV), focusing specifically on vertical multijunction (VMJ) solar cells. The use of gallium arsenide (GaAs) in these cells increases their efficiency in a range of applications, including terrestrial and space settings. Several multijunction structures are designed to maximize conversion efficiency, including a vertical tunnel junction, which minimizes resistive losses at high concentration levels compared with standard designs. Therefore, careful optimization of interconnect layers in terms of thickness and doping concentration is needed. Homo-multijunction GaAs solar cells have been simulated and analyzed by using ATLAS Silvaco 5.36 R, a sophisticated technology computer-aided design (TCAD) tool aimed to ensure the reliability of simulation by targeting a high conversion efficiency and a good fill factor for our proposed structure model. Several design parameters, such as the dimensional cell structure, doping density, and sun concentrations, have been analyzed to improve device performance under direct air mass conditions AM1.5D. The optimized conversion efficiency of 30.2% has been achieved with investigated GaAs solar cell configuration at maximum concentration levels.

Keywords: CubeSats; GaAs solar cell; TCAD; air mass 1.5; simulation; vertical-multijunction solar cell.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Device structure of GaAs VMJ solar cell.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A flowchart of the methodology used to obtain the best structure of VMJSC.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Impact of absorber P-layer thickness.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Impact of absorber N-layer thickness.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Impact of absorber P-layer doping.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Impact of absorber N-layer doping.
Figure 7
Figure 7
The efficiency vs. the concentration of sunlight varied from 1 to 10,000 suns.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Influence of concentrations.
Figure 9
Figure 9
An illustration of the best structure of a VTJ solar cell.
Figure 10
Figure 10
VTJ solar cell open-circuit voltage as a function of the concentrations with recombination mechanisms and with all recombination VTJ solar cells.
Figure 11
Figure 11
VTJ solar cell fill factors for each recombination mechanism and for all recombination.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Solar cell I-V characteristics at different light intensities.
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