Improvements in ultra‐light and flexible epitaxial lift‐off GaInP/GaAs/GaInAs solar cells for space applications

A thin, lightweight, flexible solar cell is developed that maximizes the power-to-mass ratio under AM0 illumination and has a competitive efficiency after typical high energy electron irradiation. The inverted metamorphic triple junction (IMM3J) solar cells with Ga0.51In0.49P/GaAs/Ga0.73In0.27As subcells are grown on GaAs substrates and have a total epitaxy thickness of about 10 mu m. After epitaxial growth, the inverted layer stack is metallized, with the metal serving as back-contact, back reflector and support layer for the ultra-thin solar cells before the GaAs substrate is separated by an epitaxial lift-off (ELO) process. The nondestructive nature of the ELO process makes multiple reuses of the GaAs substrate possible. The solar cell structure is optimized for maximum EOL efficiency, that is, after 1-MeV electron irradiation with a fluence of 1 x 10(15) cm(-2), by means of simulations that include the irradiation induced defects in the various semiconductor alloys. Assuming realistic charge carrier lifetime in the materials, we predict a near-term efficiency potential for the IMM3J ELO of 30.9% under AM0 illumination before and 26.7% after irradiation. Several IMM3J ELO solar cells with an area of approximately 20 cm(2) from different development stages were tested under AM0 illumination. The newest solar cells (generation III) with a mass density of only 13.2 mg/cm(2) reach conversion efficiencies of 30.2% at 25 degrees C. The resulting power-to-mass ratio of 3.0 W/g for the bare solar cell is one of the highest published ratios. After irradiation, a conversion efficiency of 25.4% was measured for "generation II" devices under AM0 illumination, which corresponds to a power-to-mass ratio of 2.6 W/g. IMM3J ELO solar cells from "generation I" were also tested for mechanical stability as "de-risking" test of this new cell technology. No degradation of the cell performance was found after dipping the cell in liquid N-2 and then heating up to 25 degrees C for five times, despite of strong deformation of the flexible cell during the temperature cycle.