Modeling of light-induced degradation of amorphous silicon solar cells

Properties of thin-film silicon solar cells at very high irradiance

“…The resulting steady increase in N D with exposure time reduces the QE of the cell by increasing the recombination rate via defects. If recombination via band tails is the primary mechanism for defect generation [10], then the process is self-limiting and at higher photon flux photocurrent vs. time will thus tend to plateau out, as we observe. The situation in practice will be more complex, since recombination is not uniform across the absorber layer and the space-charge and electric field distributions will change as degradation proceeds, providing additional feedback mechanisms linking these processes, which we have yet to consider.…”

“…Firstly, the deposition techniques used are different, PECVD for the amorphous cell and hot-wire CVD for the microcrystalline cell. Secondly, the amorphous cell studied is thicker than optimal for high stable efficiency, and shows more rapid degradation than a thinner cell [10]. Fig.…”

Comparison of amorphous silicon solar cell performance following light and high-energy electron-beam induced degradation

“…In other experiments (not shown here) we found that the activation energy of the p-and ndoped layers in the solar cell can change by as much as 0.2 eV after electron-beam irradiation. This change in activation energy particularly affects the FF of thin solar cells, as was confirmed by computer simulations [14].…”

Electroluminescence efficiency degradation of crystalline silicon solar cells after irradiation with protons in the energy range between 0.8 MeV and 65 MeV

“…The charge carrier diffusion length is thereby found to be, in the limited fluence range investigated in this study, proportial to the square root of the proton fluence value. It should be mentioned that amorphous silicon [24] and CIGS [25] and CdTe [26] solar cells are of course much less sensitive to proton irradiation, but nevertheless, silicon solar cells continue to be used widely in space applications. The information on the low energy proton degradation can be useful for the evaluation of silicon photonics device degradation under particle irradiation, which may also be in future applied in space.…”