Investigation of Radiation Resistance of Heterostructure Silicon Solar Cells

The radiation resistance of different types of heterostructural silicon solar cells under irradiation with 1 MeV electrons in the fluence range 2.5 × 1014–1 × 1015 cm–2 has been studied. Studies have shown that the smallest degradation of the “saturation” currents of the diffusion current flow mechanism from J0d ≤ 5 × 10–13 to J0d ≤ 3 × 10–12 A/cm2 and efficiency from 19.2 to 13.6% (AM0, 1367 W/m2) were n-α-Si:H/c-p(Ga)/p-α-Si:H and n-c-Si:H/c-p(Ga)/p-α-Si:H. The results obtained make it possible to evaluate the prospects for the use of heterostructure silicon solar cells for low-orbit spacecraft.