Modulated electroluminescence technique for determination of the minority carrier lifetime of solar cells

It is well known that the performance of Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin Layer (HIT) solar cells depends critically on the quality of hetero-interfaces between the bulk crystalline silicon (c-Si) and intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H). There has been evolutionary improvement in the open circuit voltage (Voc) of HIT cells over the years primarily due to the improvements in the life time of carriers lost due to recombination at the interfaces. In this work, we present modulated electroluminescence as an alternative technique to determine the effective lifetime of carriers in HIT solar cells.