On the Nature of Shunt Leakage in Amorphous Silicon p-i-n Solar Cells
Abstract
In this letter, we investigate the nature of shunt leakage currents in large-area (on the order of square centimeters) thin-film a-Si:H p-i-n solar cells and show that it is characterized by following universal features: 1) voltage symmetry; 2) power-law voltage dependence; and 3) weak temperature dependence. The voltage symmetry offers a robust empirical method to isolate the diode current from measured “shunt-contaminated” forward dark IV . We find that space-charge-limited current provides the best qualitative explanation for the observed features of the shunt current. Finally, we discuss the possible physical origin of localized shunt paths in the light of experimental observations from literature.
Keywords
Amorphous silicon solar, dark current, shunt leakage, space-charge-limited (SCL) current
DOI
10.1109/LED.2010.2064754
Citation
IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 31, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2010
Date of this Version
11-2010
Recommended Citation
Dongaonkar, Sourabh; Y, Karthik; Wang, Dapeng; Frei, Michel; Mahapatra, Souvik; and Alam, Muhammad A., "On the Nature of Shunt Leakage in Amorphous Silicon p-i-n Solar Cells" (2010). Birck and NCN Publications. Paper 709.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LED.2010.2064754