Fabrication and Parametric Degradation Analysis on the Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cell under 60Co Gamma Irradiation

This paper reports the fabrication and 60 Co gamma radiation effects on the silicon heterojunction solar cells (SHJ). The SHJ solar cells were fabricated by using physical vapor deposition technique. An n -type Si wafer was used as a substrate. The intrinsic layer, hole selective layer and transparent conductive oxide were deposited above the substrate. A complete SHJ solar cell was fabricated in dimension of 1 × 1 cm 2 . The illuminated I – V characteristics of SHJ solar cell with A.M 1.5 are done using the solar simulator. The different electrical characteristics of solar cell such as short circuit current ( I sc ), open circuit voltage ( V oc ), fill factor (FF) and conversion efficiency (η) were studied. The fabricated SHJ solar cell displayed a conversion η of 9.09%, a V oc of 0.733 V, an I sc of 19.14 mA, and an FF of 64.74%. The fabricated SHJ solar cells are subjected to doses of 60 Co gamma radiation ranging from 100 krad to 100 Mrad. As the gamma dose aincreased, the solar cell output parameters also reduced. FF decreased from 64.74 to 57.16%, and V oc decreased from 0.73 to 0.66 V. The I sc decreased to 7.825 from 19.14 mA. The η decreased from 9.09 to 2.98% for the fabricated silicon SHJ solar cell.