Theoretical study of time-resolved luminescence in semiconductors. II. Pulsed excitation

Maiberg, Matthias; Scheer, Roland

doi:10.1063/1.4896484

Cited by 56 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…[1][2][3][4] For kesterites, TRPL is often used as a metric for absorber quality for comparing and optimizing device performance. Characteristic photoluminescence (PL) decay times of a few nanoseconds are commonly reported and associated with the minority carrier lifetime τ n for this material.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying the Real Minority Carrier Lifetime in Nonideal Semiconductors: A Case Study of Kesterite Materials

Hages

Redinger

Levcenko

et al. 2017

Advanced Energy Materials

117

150

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Time‐resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) is a powerful characterization technique to study carrier dynamics and quantify absorber quality in semiconductors. The minority carrier lifetime, which is critically important for high‐performance solar cells, is often derived from TRPL analysis. However, here it is shown that various nonideal absorber properties can dominate the TRPL signal making reliable extraction of the minority carrier lifetime not possible. Through high‐resolution intensity‐, temperature‐, voltage‐dependent, and spectrally resolved TRPL measurements on absorbers and devices it is shown that photoluminescence (PL) decay times for kesterite materials are dominated by minority carrier detrapping. Therefore, PL decay times do not correspond to the minority carrier lifetime for these materials. The lifetimes measured here are on the order of hundreds of picoseconds in contrast to the nanosecond lifetimes suggested by the decay curves. These results are supported with additional measurements, device simulation, and comparison with recombination limited PL decays measured on Cu(In,Ga)Se2. The kesterite material system is used as a case study to demonstrate the general analysis of TRPL data in the limit of various measurement conditions and nonideal absorber properties. The data indicate that the current bottleneck for kesterite solar cells is the minority carrier lifetime.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying the Real Minority Carrier Lifetime in Nonideal Semiconductors: A Case Study of Kesterite Materials

Hages

Redinger

Levcenko

et al. 2017

Advanced Energy Materials

117

150

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“…In many cases, it may be possible to identify the dominant recombination mechanism, i.e. Shockley-Read-Hall, radiative or Auger, from an analysis of luminescence yield 12 , luminescence transients 13,14 , ideality factor [15][16][17][18][19] , doping level 17,20,21 , and numerical simulations 22,23 . However, distinguishing between recombination at the interface between absorber and electrodes (surface recombination) and recombination in the bulk of the absorber (bulk recombination) can be extremely challenging 24,25 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Discriminating between surface and bulk recombination in organic solar cells by studying the thickness dependence of the open-circuit voltage

Zonno

Krogmeier

Katte

et al. 2016

Applied Physics Letters

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In case of thin-film solar cells it is often rather difficult to determine what the dominant recombination mechanism is. In particular it is difficult to distinguish recombination at the interface between the absorber layer and the electrodes (typically called surface recombination) from recombination in the bulk of the absorber -or in case of organic solar cells at the internal donor-acceptor interfaces. Here, we suggest a method to distinguish surface and bulk recombination in thin-film solar cells based on the thickness dependence of the saturation current density, which we derive from the open-circuit voltage and the photocurrent at short circuit or reverse bias. By means of numerical simulations, we show that surface and bulk recombination currents scale differently with thickness assuming the material properties to be unchanged. We test our predictions on a range of organic solar cell data from our laboratory and from literature and show that in the field of organic photovoltaics the whole range of cases, from mostly surface limited to purely bulk limited, is observed.

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“…The most direct method is time resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) that could give the lifetime of minority carriers directly. 3,6 TRPL has such high time resolution that could detect reactions from several tens of picoseconds to several microseconds, and it has been widely used to characterize surface traps, 7 quantum dots or wells, 8,9 collection efficiencies, 10 and so on. In most researches TRPL measurements are based on uniform materials.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…13,14 Internal electrical field in PN junction would modify distributions of carriers significantly. 6,15 Matthias Maiberga has given the full expression of TRPL curve I(t) considering diffusion, drifting, surface recombination, and non-uniform absorption. 6 However, to solve the equation, the distribution of carriers at any time should be calculated, and many parameter should be determined.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6,15 Matthias Maiberga has given the full expression of TRPL curve I(t) considering diffusion, drifting, surface recombination, and non-uniform absorption. 6 However, to solve the equation, the distribution of carriers at any time should be calculated, and many parameter should be determined. An alternative method is one dimension transient numerical calculation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Time resolved photoluminescence studies of degradation in GaInP/GaAs/Ge solar cells after 1MeV electron irradiation

Guo

Xiao

et al. 2018

AIP Advances

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Time resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) is a powerful method to character the behaviors of carriers as it has high time resolution that could reflect the reactions of carriers within nanoseconds. For solar cells, minority carrier lifetime is the most important parameter. TRPL has been used to measure the lifetime for uniform materials. However, for homojunction solar cells, doping distribution and carrier drift make the spectroscopy analysis much difficult. Thus one dimension numerical calculations are used to study the time-dependent photoluminescence (TRPL) decay of GaAs sub-cell in GaInP/GaAs/Ge solar cells. Calculation shows that both lifetime of minorities and light intensities could determine the line shape of TRPL. The bimolecular recombination under high injection modifies the curve from single-exponential to non-single-exponential one. For TRPL of homojunction solar cell, the photoluminescence decay process is not synchronized in all parts, and the decay is fast in emitter but slower in base regions. To get the lifetimes of minority carriers after 1MeV electron irradiation, carrier generation parameter G0 should be fitted by numerical method firstly. The damage factor Kτ=4.8×10-15 cm2/ns is fitted from TRPL results. Photoluminescence spectra (PL) are also used to get Kτ=5.5×10-15 cm2/ns which is similar with the value obtained from TRPL.

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Theoretical study of time-resolved luminescence in semiconductors. II. Pulsed excitation

Cited by 56 publications

References 14 publications

Identifying the Real Minority Carrier Lifetime in Nonideal Semiconductors: A Case Study of Kesterite Materials

Identifying the Real Minority Carrier Lifetime in Nonideal Semiconductors: A Case Study of Kesterite Materials

Discriminating between surface and bulk recombination in organic solar cells by studying the thickness dependence of the open-circuit voltage

Time resolved photoluminescence studies of degradation in GaInP/GaAs/Ge solar cells after 1MeV electron irradiation

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