Distributed series resistance effects in solar cells

A mathematical treatment is presented of the effects of one-dimensional distributed series resistance in solar cells. A general perturbation theory is developed, including consistently the induced spatial variation of diode current density and leading to a first-order equivalent lumped resistance of one third the total sheet resistance. For the case of diode characteristics of exponential type and distributed resistance of arbitrary size, unified numerical results are presented for both illuminated and dark characteristics. At high forward dark currents, the distributed series resistance is shown to cause an effective doubling of the "diode quality factor."