Comprehensive study of solar cell structure defects by means of noise and light emission analysis

Abstract

This paper discusses the issue of silicon solar cells localized defects from metrological and physical points of view. Structure imperfections represent the real problem because of solar cells long-term degradation and conversion efficiency decreasing. To this aim we pay our attention to research relating to the defect light emission and correlation with rectangular microplasma fluctuation. A sensitive CCD camera has been used for mapping of surface photon emission. The operation point of the samples has been set to reverse bias mode, and different electric field intensity was applied. We managed to get interesting information using a combination of optical investigation and electrical noise measurement in time and spectral domain. It will be revealed that a direct correlation between noise and photon emission exists and the results related to several defect spots are presented in detail in this paper.