Thin Silicon Space Solar Cells

Ultra-thin silicon space solar cells leverage the advantages from silicon' dominance in the terrestrial market and develop high efficiency, lightweight, flexible, and radiation hard silicon solar cells. A thin Si solar cell can reduce the cost of space photovoltaics by a factor of 20X to more than 50X in larger scale production, while closely matching or exceeding the specific power, efficiency, and end-of-life to beginning-of-life efficiency. The realization of radiation hard silicon space cells relies on on thin solar cells, in which the thickness is less than the stopping distance of radiation in the device, substantially changing the type and nature of defects in the silicon solar cells. Experimental results show that a thin solar cell allows recovery of radiation damage under operating conditions, and modeling shows that a thin space solar cell can achieve efficiencies of 20 to 23% and up to 25% with novel light trapping.