Defect characterization of amorphous silicon thin film solar cell based on low frequency noise

Dear editor, The reliability of solar cells is the key factor to determine the performance and lifetime of photovoltaic products. Compared to the insensitivity of traditional electrical detection and the limitations of in-situ characterizationmethods, noise measurement has been widely used in semiconductor device reliability characterization for its rapid, sensitive and nondestructive. The energy band structure shows that there are two kinds of defects exist in amorphous silicon solar cells. One is the bandtail states, which concentration will increase with illumination time and will result in 1/f noise, the other one is the deep-level traps, which act as recombination centers for the carriers, and they are the origination of generation-recombination (GR) noise.