Novel Methods to Improve Efficiency of Copper-Indium-Gallium-diSelenide Solar Cells

Diverse mission requirements and advanced capabilities from defense spacecraft are placing demands on power subsystems beyond that which can be delivered by current state of the art solar arrays. Although cell level specific power has increased, similar advancement is necessary in the deployment system to take full advantage of future high power arrays. State of the practice systems have specific power values of 80 watts/kg or less, more advanced arrays have increased this value as high as 150 watts/kg. The proposed system is expected to be greater than 200 watts/kg based on 7% efficient cells deposited on thin stainless steel substrates. In addition, flexible structures combined with thin film absorbers reduce stowage volume requirements enabling power levels greater than 17kwatts (conventional arrays are limited to this level by the payload fairing envelop). Two-dimensional structures such as this are preferred over 3-D concepts as they offer an order of magnitude improvement in packaging. Our proposed array shown in offers scalability to 40kwatts, is based on cost effective subcomponents and can be ground tested multiple times without deployment device refurbishment.