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Register a new userExploiting Electrical Transients to Reveal Charge Loss Mechanism of Junction Solar Cells
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Electrical transients enabled by optical excitation and electric detection provide a distinctive opportunity to study the charge transport, recombination and even the hysteresis of a solar cell in a much wider time window ranging from nanoseconds to seconds. However, controversies on how to exploit these investigations to unravel the charge loss mechanism of the cell have been ongoing. Herein, a new methodology of quantifying the charge loss within the bulk absorber or at the interfaces and the defect properties of junction solar cells has been proposed after the conventional tail-state framework is firstly demonstrated to be unreasonable. This methodology has been successfully applied in the study of commercialized silicon and emerging Cu2ZnSn(S, Se)4 and perovskite solar cells herein and should be universal to other photovoltaic device systems with similar structures. Overall, this work provides an alluring route for comprehensive investigation of dynamic physics processes and charge loss mechanism of junction solar cells and possesses potential applications for other optoelectronic devices.
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A quite general device analysis method that allows the direct evaluation of optical and recombination losses in crystalline silicon (c-Si)-based solar cells has been developed. By applying this technique, the optical and physical limiting factors of the state-of-the-art solar cells with ~20% efficiencies have been revealed. In the established method, the carrier loss mechanisms are characterized from the external quantum efficiency (EQE) analysis with very low computational cost. In particular, the EQE analyses of textured c-Si solar cells are implemented by employing the experimental reflectance spectra obtained directly from the actual devices while using flat optical models without any fitting parameters. We find that the developed method provides almost perfect fitting to EQE spectra reported for various textured c-Si solar cells, including c-Si heterojunction solar cells, a dopant-free c-Si solar cell with a MoOx layer, and an n-type passivated emitter with rear locally diffused (PERL) solar cell. The modeling of the recombination loss further allows the extraction of the minority carrier diffusion length and surface recombination velocity from the EQE analysis. Based on the EQE analysis results, the carrier loss mechanisms in different types of c-Si solar cells are discussed.
Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials have emerged as promising candidates for thin film solar cells due to their wide bandgap range across the visible wavelengths, high absorption coefficient and ease of integration with both arbitrary substrates as well as conventional semiconductor technologies. However, reported TMD-based solar cells suffer from relatively low external quantum efficiencies (EQE) and low open circuit voltage due to unoptimized design and device fabrication. This paper studies $Pt/WSe_2$ vertical Schottky junction solar cells with various $WSe_2$ thicknesses in order to find the optimum absorber thickness.Also, we show that the photovoltaic performance can be improved via $Al_2O_3$ passivation which increases the EQE by up to 29.5% at 410 nm wavelength incident light. The overall resulting short circuit current improves through antireflection coating, surface doping, and surface trap passivation effects. Thanks to the ${Al_2O_3}$ coating, this work demonstrates a device with open circuit voltage ($V_{OC}$) of 380 mV and short circuit current density ($J_{SC}$) of 10.7 $mA/cm^2$. Finally, the impact of Schottky barrier height inhomogeneity at the $Pt/WSe_2$ contact is investigated as a source of open circuit voltage lowering in these devices
The power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of organic solar cells (OSCs) using non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) have now reached 18%. However, this is still lower than inorganic solar cells, for which PCEs >20% are commonplace. A key reason is that OSCs still show low open-circuit voltages (Voc) relative to their optical band gaps, attributed to non-radiative recombination. For OSCs to compete with inorganics in efficiency, all non-radiative loss pathways must be identified and where possible, removed. Here, we show that in most NFA OSCs, the majority of charge recombination at open-circuit proceeds via formation of non-emissive NFA triplet excitons (T1); in the benchmark PM6:Y6 blend, this fraction reaches 90%, contributing 60 mV to the reduction of Voc. We develop a new design to prevent recombination via this non-radiative channel through the engineering of significant hybridisation between the NFA T1 and the spin-triplet charge transfer exciton (3CTE). We model that the rate of the back charge transfer from 3CTE to T1 can be reduced by an order of magnitude, allowing re-dissociation of the 3CTE. We then demonstrate NFA systems where T1 formation is suppressed. This work therefore provides a clear design pathway for improved OSC performance to 20% PCE and beyond.
The thermodynamic limit of photovoltaic efficiency for a single-junction solar cell can be readily predicted using the bandgap of the active light absorbing material. Such an approach overlooks the energy loss due to non-radiative electron-hole processes. We propose a practical ab initio procedure to determine the maximum efficiency of a thin-film solar cell that takes into account both radiative and non-radiative recombination. The required input includes the frequency-dependent optical absorption coefficient, as well as the capture cross-sections and equilibrium populations of point defects. For kesterite-structured Cu$_2$ZnSnS$_4$, the radiative limit is reached for a film thickness of around 2.6 micrometer, where the efficiency gain due to light absorption is counterbalanced by losses due to the increase in recombination current.
Perovskite solar cells are notorious for exhibiting transient behaviour not seen in conventional inorganic semiconductor devices. Significant inroads have been made into understanding this fact in terms of rapid ion migration, now a well-established property of the prototype photovoltaic perovskite MAPbI$_3$ and strongly implicated in the newer mixed compositions. Here we study the manifestations of ion migration in frequency-domain small-signal measurements, focusing on the popular technique of Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS). We provide new interpretations for a variety of previously puzzling features, including giant photo-induced low-frequency capacitance and negative capacitance in a variety of forms. We show that these apparently strange measurements can be rationalized by the splitting of AC current into two components, one associated with charge-storage, and the other with the quasi-steady-state recombination current of electrons and holes. The latter contribution to the capacitance can take either a positive or a negative sign, and is potentially very large when slow, voltage-sensitive processes such as ion migration are at play. Using numerical drift-diffusion semiconductor models, we show that giant photo-induced capacitance, inductive loop features, and low-frequency negative capacitance all emerge naturally as consequences of ion migration via its coupling to quasi-steady-state electron and hole currents. In doing so, we unify the understanding of EIS measurements with the comparably well-developed theory of rate dependent current-voltage (I-V) measurements in perovskite cells. Comparing the two techniques, we argue that EIS is more suitable for quantifying I-V hysteresis than conventional methods based on I-V sweeps, and demonstrate this application on a variety of cell types.
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