OUTDOOR CHARACTERISATION OF GaAs SOLAR CELL UNDER TILTED LIGHT FOR ITS ENCAPSULATION INSIDE OPTIC CONCENTRATORS

摘要

GaAs solar cells are very well suited for its use in Photovoltaics under concentrated sunlight applications. Prototypes of Optic Concentrator and GaAs solar cell has demonstrated its feasibility although some problems still remains opened. Evidenced fill factor and photocurrent losses suggest further investigations. One of the possible sources is the encapsulating material used for gluing the solar cell to the concentrator. Then, a detailed characterization of the performance of GaAs solar cells inside a encapsulating material and under tilted light have been performed. The target has been to identify any potential mismatch between optic incident medium and antireflection coating system (ARC). The results show that if a specific ARC system is designed according to encapsulation criteria, no mismatch arises and experimental short circuit current increments are close to predicted ones.