The effect of doping density and injection level on minority-carrier lifetime as applied to bifacial dendritic web silicon solar cells

The measured short-circuit current density in bifacial dendritic web silicon solar cells has been found to decrease with decreasing base resistivity, particularly under back illumination. In addition, the ratio of short-circuit current under back illumination to short-circuit current under front illumination was observed to vary with light intensity. These observations reflect the fact that the minority-carrier lifetime in the base of these cells is a function of the base resistivity and the illumination level. The dopant was assumed to play only an indirect role in determining lifetime. This decrease in lifetime is shown to follow from a distribution of defect levels in the bandgap. These levels are a consequence of extended defects that have been observed in the web material, namely oxide precipitates and the dislocation cores that they decorate. The dopant, acts only in the indirect role of moving the Fermi level over an existing background distribution of defect levels that arise from the extended defects. Assuming a parabolic distribution of defect levels in the bandgap, the minority-carrier lifetime was calculated as a function of doping density and excess carrier concentration (illumination level) using the Shockley-Reed-Hall theory. The short-circuit current densities that were calculated using these lifetimes agreed reasonably well with measured values for bifacial dendritic web silicon solar cells. The measurements were made over a range of doping densities (6×10¹⁴ to 3×10¹⁶ cm^-3) and illumination levels (0.001 to 1 sun) for both front and back illumination of the bifacial cells