Variations in the electrical short-circuit current decay for recombination lifetime and velocity measurements

Abstract

An improved measurement system for electrical short-circuit current decay is presented that extends applicability of the method to silicon solar cells having an effective lifetime as low as 1 μs. The system uses metal/oxide/semiconductor transistors as voltage-controlled switches. Advances in theory developed here increase precision and sensitivity in the determination of the minority-carrier recombination lifetime and recombination velocity. A variation of the method, which exploits measurements made on related back-surface field and back-ohmic contact devices, further improves precision and sensitivity. The improvements are illustrated by application to 15 different silicon solar cells.