Photovoltaics Lab, IOFFE

Technology of high efficiency radiation resistant AlGaAs/GaAs solar cells were developed at first by V. Andreev's team in the 1969-1970. Since the beginning of 1970s photovoltaics has become the main field of Andreev's team interest. The world first large-scale production of hetestructure arrays for space application was started at the NPO "Kvant" using the technology developed at the IOFFE institute. These space arrays powered a lot of Russian spacecrafts in 1970-80s. One of these arrays of 70m² mounted in 1986 in the base module of the MIR Space Station operated during its entire service life without significant decrease of output power.

V.M.Andreev became a Head of Photovoltaics laboratory at Ioffe Institute in 1981. In the 1980s-1990s laboratory's team continued extensive studies of heterostructure solar cells for space and terrestrial applications, which resulted in the development of high-efficient solar cells operating under concentrated solar radiation. This work has been carried out in co-operation with Russian Space Agency, Institute de Energia Solar (Madrid), Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Freiburg), European Space Agency and NASA Glenn Research Center.

The main fields of research

Photovoltaic phenomena in semiconductors
Multijunction Solar cells based on III-V nanoheterostructures
Photovoltaic conversion of concentrated sunlight
Solar/fuel thermophotovoltaics
Photovoltaic installations based on multijunction solar cells, Fresnel lenses and solar trackers
Testing equipment development for characterization of solar cells and photovoltaic modules

News

11.12.2009

The Supervisory Council of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (RUSNANO) approved the project aimed at production of nano-heterostructure photoconverters with the efficiency reaching 37-45%. Solar modules and new generation power plants, equipped with Fresnel lenses and sun tracking system will also be produced under the auspices of the project. It will commercialize the outcomes of research conducted in the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute in the field of fundamental scientific and technical principles and technological basis for constructing the main blocks of concentrator solar photovoltaic plants.