Radiation Tolerant Nanowire Array Solar Cells

Space power systems require photovoltaics that are lightweight, efficient, reliable, and capable of operating for years or decades in space environment. Current solar panels use planar multi-junction, III-V based solar cells with very high efficiency, but their specific power (power to weight ratio) is limited by the added mass of radiation shielding (e.g. coverglass) required to protect the cells from the high-energy particle radiation that occurs in space. Here we demonstrate that III-V nanowire-array solar cells have dramatically superior radiation performance relative to planar solar cell designs and show this for multiple cell geometries and materials, including GaAs and InP. Nanowire cells exhibit damage thresholds ranging from ~10-40 times higher than planar control solar cells when subjected to irradiation by 100-350 keV protons and 1 MeV electrons. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we show that this improvement is due in part to a reduction in the displacement defect generation within the wires aris...