The effects of alpha particles’ irradiation on the performance of simplified PERC silicon solar cells are studied through technology computer aided design (TCAD) simulations. The methodology adopted in this work incorporates the non-ionizing energy loss (NIEL) phenomenon to understand the radiation effects, which does not depend on extensive irradiation experimentations. Simulation results show that alpha particles in the range of ∼10 MeV and with fluence >10¹⁴ cm⁻² lead to maximum performance degradation of the solar cell. Moreover, it is found that upon irradiating the solar cell with 1 MeV alpha particles, the output power reduces proportionally with increasing fluence due to the reduction of minority carrier lifetime in the base. On the other hand, the fill factor (FF) degrades by only <10% up to a fluence of ∼10¹³ cm⁻², after which it decreases sharply. This trend reveals that the FF deteriorates significantly only when the irradiation process creates a Frenkel pair density that approaches the majority carrier density in the base. The methodology presented in this work opens new research avenues for potentially optimizing the solar cell design not only for better efficiency but also for improved reliability in radiation rich environments.

通过技术计算机辅助设计（TCAD）仿真研究了α粒子辐照对简化的PERC硅太阳能电池性能的影响。这项工作中采用的方法结合了非电离能量损失（NIEL）现象来理解辐射效应，这不依赖于广泛的辐射实验。仿真结果表明，α粒子在〜10 MeV范围内，并且注量> 10 ¹⁴ cm ^-2导致太阳能电池的最大性能下降。而且，发现在用1MeVα粒子照射太阳能电池时，由于基极中少数载流子寿命的减少，输出功率与注量的增加成比例地减少。另一方面，填充系数（FF）仅下降＜10％，直到约10 ¹³ cm ^-2的注量，之后急剧下降。该趋势表明，仅当辐照过程产生的Frenkel对密度接近碱基中的多数载流子密度时，FF才会显着降低。这项工作中提出的方法学为潜在地优化太阳能电池设计打开了新的研究途径，不仅可以提高效率，而且还可以提高在辐射丰富的环境中的可靠性。