Articles you may be interested in A study of quantum well solar cell structures with bound-to-continuum transitions for reduced carrier recombination Appl. Phys. Lett. 102, 213903 (2013) The Meyer-Neldel behavior reported for the emission probabilities of electrons and holes was included in our code, replacing the gap state capture cross sections of the Shockley-Read-Hall formalisms with capture cross sections containing an exponential function of the trap energy depth. The Meyer-Neldel energies for electrons and holes are the slopes of these exponentials. Our results indicate that emission probabilities of neutral states no deeper than approximately 0.45 eV and 0.37 eV from the conduction and valence band edges, respectively, can show a Meyer-Neldel behavior only, while on the other hand, its implementation in deeper gap states makes the replication of experimental J-V curves of p-i-n solar cells and detectors impossible. The Meyer-Neldel behavior can be included in all neutral capture cross sections of acceptor-like tail states without affecting the J-V characteristics, while it cannot be included in all capture cross sections of neutral donor-like tail states and/or defect states without predicting device performances below the experimental figures, that become even lower when it is also included in charged capture cross sections. The implementation of the anti Meyer-Neldel behavior at tail states gives rise to slightly better and reasonable device performances. V C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.

Recombination losses of a-Si:H based p-i-n solar cells in the annealed state are analyzed with device computer modeling. Under AM1.5 illumination, the recombination rate in the intrinsic layer is shown to be controlled by a combination of losses through defect and tail states. The influence of the defect concentration on the characteristic parameters of a solar cell is analyzed. The impact on the light current-voltage characteristic curve of adopting very low free carrier mobilities and a high density of states at the band edge is explored under red and AM1.5 illumination. The distribution of trapped charge, electric field, and recombination loses inside the intrinsic layer is examined, and their influence on the solar cell performance is discussed. Solar cells with intrinsic layers deposited with and without hydrogen dilution are examined. It is found that the photocurrent at −2 V is not always a good approximation of the saturated reverse-bias photocurrent in a-Si:H p-i-n solar cells at room temperature. The importance of using realistic electrical parameters in solar cell simulations is emphasized.