Publication detail

A variety of microstructural defects in crystalline silicon solar cells

ŠKARVADA, P. TOMÁNEK, P. KOKTAVÝ, P. MACKŮ, R. ŠICNER, J. VONDRA, M. DALLAEVA, D. SMITH, S. GRMELA, L.

Original Title

A variety of microstructural defects in crystalline silicon solar cells

Type

journal article in Web of Science

Language

English

Original Abstract

The performance and lifetime of solar cells critically depends on bulk and surface defects. To improve performance of solar cells, localization and characterization of defects on the microscale is an important issue. This paper describes a variety of microstructural defects in crystalline silicon solar cells which appear during the cell processing steps. The set of defects have been investigated and localized using visible light emission under reversed bias voltage. A light beam induced photocurrent method allows localization of defects having impact on the sample current-voltage plot and reversed bias light emission characteristics. These are shown together with the micrographs of defective surface areas. As a result, particular defects which induce nonlinearity and local breakdown in the current-voltage plot were identified in tested solar cell structures. Furthermore, measurements at various temperatures allows to identify the breakdown mechanism of the investigated defects. An interesting result of the investigation is that the majority of defects are associated with surface inhomogeneities, but not all surface inhomogeneities act as defects.

Keywords

Solar cell, silicon, microstructure defect, light emission, reverse bias, measurement

Authors

ŠKARVADA, P.; TOMÁNEK, P.; KOKTAVÝ, P.; MACKŮ, R.; ŠICNER, J.; VONDRA, M.; DALLAEVA, D.; SMITH, S.; GRMELA, L.

RIV year

2014

Released

1. 9. 2014

Publisher

Elsevier

ISBN

0169-4332

Periodical

Applied Surface Science

Year of study

312

Number

312

State

Kingdom of the Netherlands

Pages from

50

Pages to

56

Pages count

7

URL

http://www.elsevier.org

BibTex

@article{BUT107704,
  author="Pavel {Škarvada} and Pavel {Tománek} and Pavel {Koktavý} and Robert {Macků} and Jiří {Šicner} and Marek {Vondra} and Dinara {Sobola} and Steve J. {Smith} and Lubomír {Grmela}",
  title="A variety of microstructural defects in crystalline silicon solar cells",
  journal="Applied Surface Science",
  year="2014",
  volume="312",
  number="312",
  pages="50--56",
  doi="10.1016/j.apsusc.2014.05.064",
  issn="0169-4332",
  url="http://www.elsevier.org"
}