Lisanne Van Puyvelde

Modeling of capacitance transients of thin-film solar cells: a valuable tool to gain information on perturbing layers or interfaces

Thin-film electronic and photovoltaic devices often comprise, in addition to the anticipated p-n junctions, additional non-ideal ohmic contacts between layers. This may give rise to additional signals in capacitance spectroscopy techniques that are not directly related to defects in the structure. In this paper, we present a fitting algorithm for transient signals arising from such an additional junction. The fitting results are in excellent agreement with the diode characteristics extracted from static measurements on individual components. Finally, the algorithm is applied for determining the barriers associated with anomalous signals reported for selected CuIn1–xGaxSe2 and CdTe solar cells.