The demands for space solar cells are continuously increasing with the rapid development of space technologies and complex space missions. The space solar cells are facing more critical challenges than before: higher conversion efficiency and better radiation resistance. Being the main power supply in spacecrafts, III-V multijunction solar cells are the main focus for space application nowadays due to their high efficiency and super radiation resistance. In multijunction solar cell structure, the key to obtaining high crystal quality and increase cell efficiency is satisfying the lattice matching and bandgap matching conditions. New materials and new structures of high efficiency multijunction solar cell structures are continuously coming out with low-cost, lightweight, flexible, and high power-to-mass ratio features in recent years. In addition to the efficiency and other properties, radiation resistance is another sole criterion for space solar cells, therefore the radiation effects of solar cells and the radiation damage mechanism have both been widely studied fields for space solar cells over the last few decades. This review briefly summarized the research progress of III-V multijunction solar cells in recent years. Different types of cell structures, research results and radiation effects of these solar cell structures under different irradiation conditions are presented. Two main solar cell radiation damage evaluation models—the equivalent fluence method and displacement damage dose method—are introduced.

In this paper we reported the electrical and spectral properties of 1 MeV electron and 3 MeV proton irradiated In_0.53Ga_0.47As single junction solar cell, which is used as the fourth subcell of wafer bonded GaInP/GaAs//InGaAsP/InGaAs four-junction full spectra solar cell. The equivalent displacement damage dose model was applied to study the radiation effects of solar cell. The results show that the electrical parameters of the solar cell degrade seriously with the increase of irradiation fluences, the reduction of minority carrier life-time and changes of series and shunt resistance caused by irradiation-induced displacement damage are the main reason for the degradation of cell performance. Degradation of spectral response mainly occurred in the long wavelength region of solar cell due to the bigger displacement damage in the base layer of solar cell. Degradation properties of solar cell by electron and proton irradiation can be predicted by electron to proton damage equivalency factor R_ep.