Thermal annealing study of 1 MeV electron-irradiation-induced defects in n+p InGaP diodes and solar cells

The study presents detailed isothermal and isochronal annealing recovery of photovoltaic parameters in n(+)/p InGaP solar cells after 1 MeV electron irradiation. Correlation of the solar cells characteristics with changes in the deep level transient spectroscopy data observed in irradiated and annealed n(+)/p InGaP diodes and solar cells shows that the H2 (E-v+0.50 eV) and H3 (E-v+0.76 eV) defects have a dominant role in governing the minority-carrier lifetime as well as carrier removal. However, capacitance-voltage measurements indicate that other defects must also play a role in the carrier removal process. In addition, the concentration of the H2 defect is found to decay significantly as a result of room temperature storage for 40 days, suggesting that InGaP-based solar cells will display superior radiation tolerance in space. Finally, the deep donor-like-defect H2 is tentatively identified as a phosphorus Frenkel pair. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.