Effect of cell structures on electrical degradation of GaAs laser power convertors after 1 MeV electron irradiation and structure-optimization for improving radiation resistance

Laser wireless power transfer (LWPT) technology holds significant promise for wireless power transmission in space, necessitating that high-efficiency GaAs laser power convertors (LPCs) have strong tolerance to high-energy particle radiation. Therefore, the degradation characteristics of GaAs LPCs with different architectures under 1 MeV electron irradiation were investigated. Experimental and simulation results demonstrate that LPCs with thicker bottom cells suffer from significantly more electrical degradation. The degradation is primarily due to a reduction in electron concentrations in the base of the bottom cells, which is considerably less pronounced as the thickness of the bottom cells decreases. Based on these analyses, thinning the thickness and optimizing the doping profile for the bottom cells are proposed to improve the radiation resistance of the LPCs. Simulations show that the electrical degradation of the optimized four-junction LPCs is notably less than that of the original four-junction LPCs under the same irradiation conditions, indicating that the proposed strategies effectively enhance the radiation resistance of the LPCs.