IMPLICATIONS FOR THE TECHNOLOGY OF HIGH-VOLTAGE SOLAR-ARRAYS - THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ARC RESISTANT CELL

All solar arrays have biased surfaces which can be exposed to the spac e environment. It has been observed that when the array bias is less t han a few hundred volts negative then the exposed conductive surfaces may undergo arcing in the space plasma. A theory for arcing has been d eveloped on these high voltage solar arrays which ascribes the arcing to electric field runaway at the interface of the plasma, conductor an d solar cell dielectric. The theory was compared in detail to the expe rimental data and shown to give a reasonable explanation for the data. The theory suggests that overhanging the coverglass over the triple j unction will modify the field runaway. It is shown that there is a cri tical overhang beyond which field runaway is unlikely to occur in spac e and therefore arcing will be suppressed.