An experimental study of drift-field silicon solar cells

Silicon solar cells were constructed with drift fields of various widths and magnitudes. Both initial performance and performance after irradiation with up to 10¹⁶1 MeV electrons/cm²are compared with theory. Behavior is much as expected if the radiation damage is assumed to vary with doping level. This latter assumption leads to the conclusion that little change in cell performance occurs because of the field. Such a result was not anticipated at the start of the investigation, since the neglect of the capture cross-section variation gave the prediction of appreciably improved radiation tolerance.