Application of Electrical Measurements to Investigation of Solar Cell Microstructure Defects

Abstract

The research is aimed to the investigation of the microstructure defects in the silicon and the thin-film CIGS solar cells. These defects have their origin mainly in the technological process of a production but they can be caused by an accidental mechanical stress during a normal operation, too. That leads to a formation of the micro-cracks and the fractures, which have a significant effect on a device efficiency and reliability. The reverse-bias conditions are usually used for the defects charac- terization purposes. The mechanical induced defects increase a reverse current which leads to a strong overheating in the local breakdowns and the surroundings areas, thus for the defects localization pur- poses an infrared imaging and an electroluminescence method is used. Beyond these commonly used methods the results from the electrical current noise fluctuations observed in a frequency domain are presented in this work. The noise fluctuations measurement is a reliable indicator of a device quality and allow us to qualify the device damage extent. Using combination of these methods it is possible to localize the particular defects, assess the degree of a damage and classify the elimination process of the particular defects.