Ultraviolet damage in solar cell assemblies with various UV filters
Ultraviolet damage to the new violet and non-reflective type solar cell assemblies, was studied, and potential advantages of using coverslides with no filters or filters with cut-off wavelengths below 0.35 micron were determined. The experiments consisted of three types of tests on fused silica coverslides with 0.35- and 0.30-micron cut-off filters and no cut-off filters, as well as on ceria-doped microsheet coverslides. Ultraviolet irradiation for over 1500 hours at one sun conditions (AMO) was carried out under vacuum of about 1 million torr. Nearly identical results for non-reflective type cells with 0.35-micro cut-off filters or ceria-doped coverslides were obtained. The 0.30-um filtered cell shows greater than average degradation. The unfiltered cell shows an abrupt drop in the first 20 UVSH and very little subsequent degradation.