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

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

• GaAs solar cell
• TCAD
• simulation
• vertical-multijunction solar cell
• CubeSats
• air mass 1.5