Radiation Hardness of Perovskite/Silicon and Perovskite/CIGS Tandem Solar Cells under Proton Irradiation

Single-and multi-junction solar cells based on hybrid perovskites are attractive for space applications due to their high efficiency-to-mass ratio. However, in space, outside of Earth’s magnetic field, solar arrays are exposed to high energetic proton and electron irradiation. Such high energetic radiation causes the formation of defects that accumulate and ultimately cause device failure. Recently, experiments have demonstrated the ability of methyl ammonium lead iodide perovskites to withstand the harsh radiation environment in space. 1–3 In order to increase the efficiency-to-mass ratio further, compositional engineering of perovskites utilizing a variety of cations and anions is required. Moreover, this approach allows to control the optical band gap 4 which is necessary for efficient tandem solar cells comprising a perovskite top and silicon or Cu (In, Ga) Se 2 (CIGS) bottom absorbers.In this work, we present a variety of in-situ measurements to demonstrate that [Cs 0.05 (MA 0.17 FA 0.83) 0.95] Pb (I 0.83 Br 0.17) 3 based perovskite absorbers are radiation hard and possess negligible degradation under high-energy, high-dose proton irradiation. 5 Optimized [Cs 0.05 (MA 0.17 FA 0.83) 0.95] Pb (I 0.83 Br 0.17) 3 based single junction solar cells reach efficiencies of 19% under simulated AM0 illumination and maintain 95% of their initial efficiency even after irradiation with protons at an energy of 68 MeV and a total dose of 10 12 p/cm 2. Despite this negligible degradation, analyses suggest the formation of some radiation induced defect states causing a slower decay of the open circuit voltage and photoluminescence intensity after proton irradiation …