Spatially Resolved Determination of Junction Voltage of Silicon Solar Cells

Abstract

For the extraction of spatially resolved solar cell parameters, a variety of methods has been introduced in the past years. Nearly all methods use the fact that the local luminescence intensity can be calibrated to local junction voltage. The different methods however use different approaches for the calibration. In this work we discuss the different approaches used throughout literature. We investigate the key assumption of two approaches which assumes that there are no lateral junction voltage gradients at sufficiently low excitation conditions. Our investigation is based on circuit simulations and experimental results on an example cell. We give an explanation for the remaining contrasts in luminescence images taken at these low excitation conditions. A third approach which does not rely on the key assumption is discussed with respect to measurement time in comparison to the other approaches. Finally the role of the short circuit current is discussed and a modification to the approach as known from literature is proposed.