The Study of Femtosecond Laser Irradiation on GaAs Solar Cells With TiO₂/SiO₂ Anti-Reflection Films

Femtosecond laser ablation on GaAs solar cells for space power has been investigated. In particular, we studied the effects of laser energy and laser number on the ablation of solar cells. Furthermore, the morphologies and microstructure of ablation were characterized by the non-contact optical profilometer and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The photovoltaic properties were tested by the volt ampere characteristic test system. The abaltion threshold of the TiO₂/SiO₂ anti-reflection film of GaAs solar cells was obtained from the linear fit of the dependence of the square diameter of the ablated area with the natural logarithm of the femtosecond laser pulse energy, the resulting threshold of the laser fluence is about 0.31J/cm², and the corresponding energy is 5.4uJ. The ablation depth showed nonlinear dependence of energy. With the fixed energy 6uJ and the increasing laser number, the damage degree increases obviously. Furthermore, the electric properties also suffer a certain degradation. Among all the evaluated electric properties, the photoelectric conversion efficiency (η) degraded remarkably.