2017-Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit
SIPS 2017 Volume 8: Surfaces and Interfaces(SISAM), Composite, Ceramic and Nanomaterials
| Editors: | Kongoli F, Braems I, Demange V, Dubois JM, Pech-Canul M, Patino CL, Fumio O |
| Publisher: | Flogen Star OUTREACH |
| Publication Year: | 2017 |
| Pages: | 249 pages |
| ISBN: | 978-1-987820-75-1 |
| ISSN: | 2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series) |
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Grain Boundaries in Solar Cells and Their Influence on Electrical Characteristics
Pawel Zabierowski1;1WARSAW UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, Warsaw, Poland;
Type of Paper: Plenary
Id Paper: 353
Topic: 42
Abstract:
Grain boundaries (GBs) are important elements of photovoltaic devices. Usually, they act as effective recombination sinks and limit the conversion efficiency of low cost silicon solar cells, but in devices employing compound semiconductors the role of GBs is not that obvious as their presence is also considered to be beneficial. Since, in either case, the knowledge of electronic properties of GBs is crucial for further improvements, we first discuss experimental techniques allowing for characterization of the electronic activity of GBs as well as analytical approaches relating the properties of GBs to the carrier transport mechanisms. However, due to the complexity of the system, the application of such simple models for the interpretation of real data is very often not straightforward. Therefore, we further focus on more advanced topics, such as metastable defects, taking as an example Cu(In,Ga)Se2- based solar cells.