An effective way to analyse the performance limiting parameters of poly-crystalline silicon solar cell fabricated in the production line

•Interfacial recombination limited performance parameters are studied.•New characterisation tool for the quantitative measurements of production line cells is proposed.•An insight into the loss mechanisms within the solar cell with a simple tool is proposed.

This article focuses on the identification of key features that are responsible for the discrepancies in the performance of silicon solar cells fabricated on multicrystalline silicon under the identical conditions. In an experimental approach, direct current (DC) measurement coupled with alternating current (AC) characterisation technique has been employed. The scanning electron microscope analysis reveals an average grain size of few micrometres for all the solar cells and the top surface of least efficient solar cell contains the impurity precipitates with deep cone shaped holes or pits. The DC measurement reveals that the photocurrent density loss follows an exponential behaviour with respect to the current–voltage characteristics for all the solar cells. The analysis of −dV/dJ versus (JSC − J)−1 plot and the variation of ideality factor with junction voltage demonstrate that the higher resistive and recombination losses dominate the performance of least efficient solar cell. Impedance Spectroscopy (IS) technique is used to quantify and decouple the various photovoltaic parameters associated with the different physical processes. A lower value of shunt resistance and minority carrier lifetime along with the higher value of series resistance contribute to the higher resistive loss and surface recombination. The experimental results along with the analytical model provide an insight into the loss mechanisms and the use of a simple tool that can be integrated with the conventional photovoltaic testing.

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