The low earth orbit plasma experienced by exposed interconnect-dielectric junctions commonly found on spacecraft solar panel surfaces was modeled using a fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation of both ambient ions and electrons. From time-accurate simulations we observed that the plasma sheath had a formation time somewhere between the ion and electron time scales of 17 μs and 30ps, respectively and electron and ion velocity distribution functions were observed to be highly non-Maxwellian. Comparison of the electron plasma sheath thickness with analytic cylindrical sheath models gave reasonable agreement if the embedded biased interconnect voltage was sufficiently high to cause the dielectric surface to act as a free electron flowing medium. Finally, it was found from the fully kinetic PIC simulations that the fundamental mechanism behind parasitic current is closely related to electron avalanche and the fraction of SEE emitted from different avalanche levels as well as the current collected at the interconnect could be modeled by a power law series for avalanche levels greater than two.

航天器太阳能电池板表面上常见的暴露互连-电介质结所经历的低地球轨道等离子体使用环境离子和电子的全动力学粒子电池 (PIC) 模拟进行建模。从时间精确的模拟中，我们观察到等离子体鞘的形成时间介于 17 μ的离子和电子时间尺度之间s 和 30ps，分别观察到电子和离子速度分布函数是高度非麦克斯韦分布函数。如果嵌入的偏置互连电压足够高以导致电介质表面充当自由电子流动介质，则电子等离子体鞘层厚度与解析圆柱形鞘层模型的比较给出了合理的一致性。最后，从全动力学 PIC 模拟中发现，寄生电流背后的基本机制与电子雪崩密切相关，不同雪崩水平发射的 SEE 部分以及互连处收集的电流可以通过幂律建模雪崩水平大于 2 的系列。