The experimentally observed dependence of effective surface recombination velocity Seff at the Si-SiO2 interface on light-induced minority carrier excess concentration is compared with theoretical predictions of an ‘‘extended Shockley–Read–Hall (SRH) formalism.’’ The calculations of SRH-recombination rates at the Si-SiO2 interface are based on the theory of a surface space charge layer under nonequilibrium conditions and take into account the impact of illumination level, gate metal work function, fixed oxide charge density, and the energy dependence of capture cross sections σn, σp and interface state density Dit. Applying this theory to p-type silicon surfaces covered by high quality thermal oxides, the experimentally observed strong increase of Seff with decreasing minority carrier excess concentration could quantitatively be attributed to the combined effect of the σn/σp ratio of about 1000 at midgap and the presence of a positive fixed oxide charge density Qf of about 1×1011 charges/cm2. Due to the favorable work function of aluminum, surface recombination velocities below 1 cm/s can be obtained at Al-covered Si-SiO2 interfaces for minority carrier densities above 1013 cm−3.

Photovoltaic devices have become ideal alternatives instead of common energy sources owing to their superior mechanical robustness and excellent power conversion efficiency that can be used for supplying wearable electronic devices.

This paper presents a critical review on potential-induced degradation (PID) in photovoltaic modules to illustrate the current research status and potential research paths to address PID-related issues.

In the 1980s, advances in the passivation of both cell surfaces led to the first crystalline silicon solar cells with conversion efficiencies above 20%. With today's industry trend towards thinner wafers and higher cell efficiency, the passivation of the front and rear surfaces is now also becoming vitally important for commercial silicon cells. This paper presents a review of the surface passivation methods used since the 1970s, both on laboratory‐type as well as industrial cells. Given the trend towards lower‐cost (but also lower‐quality) Si materials such as block‐cast multicrystalline Si, ribbon Si or thin‐film polycrystalline Si, the most promising surface passivation methods identified to date are the fabrication of a p–n junction and the subsequent passivation of the resulting silicon surface with plasma silicon nitride as this material, besides reducing surface recombination and reflection losses, additionally provides a very efficient passivation of bulk defects. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Outstanding surface passivation of low-resistivity single-crystalline p-silicon is reported using silicon nitride fabricated at low temperature (375 °C) in a remote plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition system. The effective surface recombination velocity Seff is determined as a function of the bulk injection level from light-biased photoconductance decay measurements. On polished as well as chemically textured silicon wafers we find that our remote plasma silicon nitride provides better surface passivation than the best high-temperature thermal oxides ever reported. For polished 1.5 and 0.7 Ω cm p-silicon wafers, record low Seff values of 4 and 20 cm/s, respectively, are presented.

Recently, a simple yet powerful carrier lifetime technique for semiconductor wafers has been introduced that is based on the simultaneous measurement of the light-induced photoconductance of the sample and the corresponding light intensity [Appl. Phys. Lett. 69, 2510 (1996)]. In combination with a light pulse from a flash lamp, this method allows the injection level dependent determination of the effective carrier lifetime in the quasi-steady-state mode as well as the quasi-transient mode. For both cases, approximate solutions (those for steady-state and transient conditions) of the underlying semiconductor equations have been used. However, depending on the actual lifetime value and the time dependence of the flash lamp, specific systematic errors in the effective carrier lifetime arise from the involved approximations. In this work, we present a generalized analysis that avoids these approximations and hence substantially extends the applicability of the quasi-steady-state and quasi-transient methods beyond their previous limits.