Charged Grain Boundaries and Carrier Recombination in Polycrystalline Thin-Film Solar Cells

Published

November 13, 2017

Author(s)

Benoit H. Gaury, Paul M. Haney

Abstract

We present analytical relations for the dark recombination current of a pn+ junction with positively charged columnar grain boundaries in the high defect density regime. We consider two defect state configurations relevant for positively charged grain boundaries: a single donor state and a continuum of both acceptors and donors. Compared to a continuum of acceptor+donor states, or to the previously studied single acceptor+donor state, the grain boundary recombination of a single donor state is suppressed by orders of magnitude. We show numerically that superposition holds near the open-circuit voltage Voc, so that our dark J(V) relations determine Voc for a given short circuit current Jsc. We finally explicitly show how Voc depends on the grain boundary defect state structure.

Citation

Physical Review Applied

Volume

8

Issue

5

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.8.054026

Citation

Gaury, B. and Haney, P. (2017), Charged Grain Boundaries and Carrier Recombination in Polycrystalline Thin-Film Solar Cells, Physical Review Applied, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.8.054026 (Accessed October 11, 2025)