Photovoltaic Cells for Very High Altitude Very Long Endurance Solar Aircraft

For next decadal space appalications, space-borne systems require power system with long life capability and high reliability and offering significant mass and volume savings and significantly improved conversion efficiency compared to the state of art devices. Photovoltaic cell (a.k.a.“Solar Cell”) where light is converted into electric power, has been prevailing in a wide range of application fields such as consumer electronics, industrial electronics and space exploration. High-efficiency solar cell are required for various ground-based, air-borne, space-borne, and commercial systems, including remote sensing, surface topography, range detection, security, communication, and real-time monitoring of biological systems etc. The existing solar cells especially for space applications, are currently limited in efficiency by the complexity of adding more junctions to increase absorption of the solar spectrum. It is highly desirable to develop solar cell that has higher conversion efficiency (>40%) and cost-effective for numerous applications. The proposed project overcomes the limitations of achieving efficiency and can provides an affordable, power rich environment utilizing the conventional material and process technology. A goal of Phase I is to design and optimize solar cell structure for conversion efficiency of > 40%, utilizing the standard material such as CdS-CdTe for space application. Also, other goal is to fabricate the test structure to achieve conversion efficiency over 30% and comparing with the standard cell. The design, performance simulation, and also physical parameters optimization will also be carried out as a part of the Phase I activity.