The high temperature stability of these materials will benefit operation under high concentrations in terrestrial DoD applications. InGaN solar cells are also viewed as an enabling technology for better efficiency terrestrial/space solar cells where environmental factors are less of an issue. The large commercial terrestrial market could benefit from the hybridization of InGaN materials to existing solar cell technology to significantly increase cell efficiency without relying on highly toxic compounds. In addition, further development of this technology to even lower bandgap materials for space applications could be of importance to DoD and commercial satellite manufacturers due to the extended lifetimes of satellite solar cell arrays arising from increased radiation hardness.
Although solar cells are used on many NASA platforms for power generation, IMS envisions the cells developed in this project would be especially beneficial to missions near the sun and those in high radiation environments. Therefore, the missions Solar Orbiter and Solar Sentinels in the Living with a Star Program (LWS) could benefit from this technology. The photovoltaic panels in these missions will be exposed to much larger AM0 solar fluxes than typical near-Earth satellites approximately 25 suns for the Orbiter, and 16 suns for the Sentinels.
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