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Abstract
Thin-film solar cells based on polycrystalline absorbers have reached very high conversion efficiencies of up to 23-25%. In order to elucidate the limiting factors that need to be overcome for even higher efficiency levels, it is essential to investigate microscopic origins of loss mechanisms in these devices. In the present work, a high efficiency (21% without anti-reflection coating) copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGSe) solar cell is characterized by means of a correlative microscopy approach and corroborated by means of photoluminescence spectroscopy. The values obtained by the experimental characterization are used as input parameters for two-dimensional device simulations, for which a real microstructure was used. It can be shown that electrostatic potential and lifetime fluctuations exhibit no substantial impact on the device performance. In contrast, nonradiative recombination at random grain boundaries can be identified as a significant loss mechanism for CIGSe solar cells, even for devices at a very high performance level.
Highlights
Thin-film solar cells based on polycrystalline absorbers have reached very high conversion efficiencies of up to 23-25%
Solar cell parameters of the investigated copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGSe) solar cell as well as the theoretical values corresponding to a band-gap energy of 1.11 eV and an AM1.5 G power spectrum calculated by the Shockley–Queisser approach[5]
The two-dimensional device simulation revealed that lateral inhomogeneities in lifetime and net-doping have no significant impact on the device performance of the highly efficient CIGSe solar cell studied in the present work
Summary
Thin-film solar cells based on polycrystalline absorbers have reached very high conversion efficiencies of up to 23-25%. Nonradiative recombination at random grain boundaries can be identified as a significant loss mechanism for CIGSe solar cells, even for devices at a very high performance level. Thin-film solar cells with polycrystalline absorber layers exhibit high power-conversion efficiencies of up to 23–25%1–3. In spite of their excellent photovoltaic (PV). We chose Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGSe) solar cells, for which the open-circuit voltage (Voc) and the fill factor (FF) are limited by nonradiative recombination, as an exemplary case, in order to demonstrate the importance of microscopic and correlative analysis, combining experimental and simulation methods. In order to gain access to this information, a CIGSe solar cell, which exhibits a high conversion efficiency of about 21% without anti-reflection coating (ARC), was characterized intensely in the present work. We have employed various scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques as well as photoluminescence (PL) and capacitance–voltage (CV) analysis but have performed two-dimensional device simulations in order to corroborate the experimental results
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