Injection-photon annealing of radiation induced defects during heterostructure concentrator solar cells operation

An improvement of the p-AlGaAs-p-GaAs-n-GaAs solar cells (SC) by decreasing the p-GaAs and p-AlGaAs thicknesses up to 0.3 mu m and 100 AA, respectively, is discussed. The drop in photocurrent in the SC after 6.7 MeV proton bombardment at a dose of 6*10/sup 12/ cm/sup -2/ was less than 10%. Additional ways to decrease the concentration of radiation-induced defects in the SC are injection (due to current flow) and photon (due to photoexcitation) annealing. These processes have been realized during operating of SC converting 15-100-fold concentrated sunlight.<
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