A novel approach to modeling the effects of radiation in Gallium-Arsenide solar cells using Silvaco's atlas software

Abstract

The effects of radiation in GaAs solar cells has been extensively researched and the results of numerous investigation have yielded a considerable amount of information about the degradation in irradiated solar cells. This thesis establishes a novel method in which to use Silvaco's physically-based device simulator, ATLAS, to model the effects of radiation on solar cell output characteristics. A virtual model representing a single junction GaAs solar cell was created in ATLAS. The effects of radiation were modeled using carrier trapping statements representing the defects associated with various fluence levels of 1 MeV electron radiation which were characterized with Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy techniques. The resulting output characteristics of the virtual solar cell, illuminated with a simulated AM0 spectrum, were compared to published experimental measurements for GaAs solar cells of the same dimensions. The virtual solar cell demonstrated a good correlation between the measured and virtual solar cell output characteristics and accurate representation of the spectral response. Complete ATLAS and MATLAB codes are included in appendices.