Extreme radiation hard thin film CZTSSe solar cell

In this work, we have demonstrated the extreme radiation hardness of thin film CZTSSe solar cells. Thin film solar cells with CZTSSe, CZTS and CIGS absorber layers were irradiated with 3 MeV protons. No degradation in device parameters was observed until a displacement damage dose of 2 × 1010 MeV/g for CZTS and CZTSSe. CIGS solar cells degraded by 13% at the same dose. For the highest proton dose both the CZTSSe and CZTS degraded by 16% while CIGS suffered from 34% degradation in efficiency. The degradation in efficiency maybe attributed to the reduction in the minority carrier lifetime due to radiation induced lattice defects. Comparisons with previously available literature show that our CZTS technology has superior radiation hardness by about two orders of magnitude compared to existing state of the art Si and GaAs technology. •Extreme radiation hardness of the CZTSSe is demonstrated for the first time exposed to 3 MeV protons.•Results show CZTSSe have superior radiation hardness compared to current space solar cells.•Reduction in η is attributed to decrease in Voc possibly due to the introduction of lattice defects.•Our results open up new application areas for CZTSSe in space exploration.