Combined Thermography and Luminescence Imaging to Characterize the Spatial Performance of Multicrystalline Si Wafer Solar Cells

As-cut partially processed multicrystalline Si (mc-Si) wafers and complete mc-Si solar cells are characterized using photoluminescence imaging, defect mapping, and thermographic local current-voltage (I-V) analysis. Photoluminescence imaging applied to the partially processed mc-Si material after 1)...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of photovoltaics 2015-01, Vol.5 (1), p.102-111
Main Authors: Peloso, Matthew P., Lei Meng, Bhatia, Charanjit S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Characterization
Defects
Electric breakdown
Imaging
lock-in thermography
Luminescence
luminescence imaging
multicrystalline silicon
Performance evaluation
photovoltaic cell
Photovoltaic cells
shunt
Silicon
Solar energy
Substrates
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:As-cut partially processed multicrystalline Si (mc-Si) wafers and complete mc-Si solar cells are characterized using photoluminescence imaging, defect mapping, and thermographic local current-voltage (I-V) analysis. Photoluminescence imaging applied to the partially processed mc-Si material after 1) RCA clean and a surface damage etch, 2) diffusion and phosphate silica glass removal, and 3) SiN x :H coating reveals local performance enhancements over regions of the mc-Si wafer solar cell. A comprehensive imaging study including defect luminescence imaging, polarization imaging, breakdown imaging, and dark lock-in thermography is applied to the final device after metallization to obtain defect distributions and local spatially resolved I-V characteristics of the device. The analysis shows that substrate defects, reverse-bias, and subbandgap electroluminescence emission from various defects in the device correlate spatially with the determined electrical properties of the device.
ISSN:2156-3381
2156-3403
DOI:10.1109/JPHOTOV.2014.2362303