Investigation of recombination centers in the active layers of HIT solar cells

Abstract

In this paper we present results of DLTS investigating HIT solar cells. Analysis of DLTS spectra gave deep level activation energies and concentrations. However this method hardly allows to find spatial localization of these defect states. Therefore here we developed a method to find separated values of recombination rates corresponding to different spatial regions: a-Si layers, interfaces, depletion region and quasineutral base. We quantity found that recombination in the depletion region and at the interfaces strongly dominate and affect efficiency of the cell. Here we show that this technique is useful for interpretation of DLTS data and investigation of recombination processes in HIT solar cells.