Lightweight Dual Junction Radiation Hardened Solar Cells

In this Phase I SBIR, Microlink Devices in collaboration with Prof. Jeehwan Kim of MIT will develop a low cost, flexible, radiation hard dual junction InGaP/GaAs solar cell using graphene assisted epitaxy for space application.The innovation in this Phase I SBIR is the development of low cost, light weight, flexible epitaxial lift-off (ELO) InGaP/GaAs dual junction (DJ) solar cells with improved beginningof-life (BoL) to end-of-life (EoL) efficiency ratio >77% and suitable for deployment in solar electric propulsion space applications.In this Phase I program we will develop a 30% AM0 efficient ELO DJ InGaP/GaAs solar cell. We intend to improve the EoL efficiency of ELO DJ cells by the application of wavelength specific photonic structures at the back of the solar cell and also reducing GaAs subcell thickness of the DJ cell. The grapheme assisted remote epitaxy and subsequent exfoliation will help in developing a fast turn around epitaxiallift-off process, which can help in cost reduction.