Investigation of pure and hybrid tungsten-based transition metal di-chalcogenides for radiation resistant space photovoltaic applications

Abstract

Transition metal di-chalcogenides (TMDCs) have strong potential for space photovoltaic applications since they are resilient to radiation, and hybrid alloys exhibit tunable electro-optic properties. The electronic properties of tungsten-based TMDC alloys containing sulfur, selenium and tellurium were calculated using density functional theory. Hybrid alloys have tunable direct bandgaps dependent on the chalcogen composition. A photovoltaic model consisting of pure and hybrid TMDCs was demonstrated to give an efficiency above 23% under the AM0 space solar spectrum. The non-ionizing energy loss due to high-energy radiation was investigated; it was shown that TMDCs have significantly enhanced radiation resilience than commonly used semiconductors.