The role of inhomogeneities for understanding current-voltage characteristics 
of solar cells

Breitenstein, Otwin

doi:10.1109/JPHOTOV.2018.2861728

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Please note that a newer version of this item is available:
https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_3314641_2

DetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

The role of inhomogeneities for understanding current-voltage characteristics of solar cells

MPS-Authors

Breitenstein, Otwin
Nano-Systems from Ions, Spins and Electrons, Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOTOV.2018.2861728
(Publisher version)

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Breitenstein, O. (2018). The role of inhomogeneities for understanding current-voltage characteristics of solar cells. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 8(6), 1429-1435. doi:10.1109/JPHOTOV.2018.2861728.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0009-2E91-0

Abstract

All solar cells show more or less inhomogeneous electronic properties. This holds in particular for multicrystalline silicon cells, where local differences of the lifetime of more than an order of magnitude exist. This contribution explains how these inhomogeneities can be imaged and quantified, and the physical origins and the efficiency degradation potential of J₀₁-, J₀₂-, and ohmic inhomogeneities are reviewed. It is found that J₀₂ and ohmic currents are always highly localized, in contrast with J₀₁ currents. Hence, for describing most of the area of silicon solar cells, a one-diode model is sufficient, but J₀₂ and ohmic currents reduce the efficiency at low illumination intensity. Moreover, the physical origins of known prebreakdown phenomena are reviewed and a new breakdown type dominating in monocrystalline silicon cells is proposed.