Determination of polysilicon solar cell parameters using electrical short-circuit current decay method

The electrical short-circuit current decay (ESCCD) method is enlarged to a polycrystalline silicon solar cell with grains fibrously oriented. The current decay through the n-p junction of a short-circuited cell, after the sudden cut-off of a constant forward voltage, is derived and numerically computed. A theoretical study of the influence of grain boundaries and base doping concentration on ESCCD, not noticed earlier, is made. A graphical evaluation of GB recombination velocity S-ng and bulk lifetime tau(n) is performed in the case of a BSF cell. The accuracy of the ESCCD method in the extraction of these solar cell parameters is found to be very sensitive to the ratio of base width to grain size H-b/X-g. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. Ail rights reserved.