Electrical Characterization of HIT Type Solar Cells

Abstract

The silicon heterojunction solar cell (SHJ) has made rapid progress in reaching high efficiency and it is already developed as an industrially viable product. However, much of its progress has come through process development while there is scarce knowledge on the microscopic nature of the functioning of this device. Although this device as a whole can be considered as bulk type, the parts of a SHJ solar cell that control the charge transport behavior are limited to very thin regions, either interface or a very thin layer. This poses problems on accurate determination of the physical quantities, such as defect densities and energetic positions, conductivity, carrier recombination and the overall charge transport behavior. This chapter gives the present understanding of electrical characterization of SHJ solar cells and provides a study of defects in the interesting regions of the device.