Abstract

We describe the performance of four Applied Solar Energy Corp. and one Varian photovoltaic-array (PVA) GaAs solar cells, one monolithic and four segmented cells. The active layers of these cells are grown using metalorganic chemical vapor deposition techniques. The cell characteristics described include (1) electrical power (EP) vs cell resistance, (2) current vs voltage, (3) optimum resistance R, (4) efficiency E, and (5) fill factor (FF) for different incident LD optical power (LP) levels, respectively. For the 1-, 2-, 2'-, 10-, and 16-V cell with LP = 1.5 W (1) the EP is 0.58, 0.49, 0.73, 0.40, and 0.23 W, (2) the short circuit current is 839, 411, 371, 67.2, and 30.6 mA and the open circuit voltage is 1.08, 2.16, 2.28, 10.45, and 16.73 V, (4) R is 1.1, 5.6, 5.9, 170, and 700 Ω, (4) E(max) is 49, 39, 46, 29, and 18%, respectively, and (5) FF is 0.655, 0.534, 0.864, 0.60, and 0.445, respectively. EP decreases with increasing cell voltage rating. At a specific output voltage, the cell current is found to increase with increasing LP. R decreases with increasing cell voltage rating. The R vs LP curves are found to fit a power relationship; R = aLP expb, where a and b are constant for a cell but different for each cell. For 0.1 W of uniform white light and nonuniform LD light transmitted through a FO, the FFs of the 2- and 16-V cells differ by 2.3 and 0.4%, respectively.

© 1988 Optical Society of America