Investigation of the solar cell emitter quality by LBIC-like image techniques

The distributed properties of solar cell emitters and p-n junctions such as sheet resistance, local potential and shuns resistance were studied by ori ginal methods based on the laser scanning technique. To study the shunt res istance defects the dynamical optical reflectance thermography technique ha s been developed thanks to new possibilities of signal treatment and 2D sca nning, The experimental factors that influence on PV LBIC-like signal are a nalyzed. It is shown that the information about the local potential and she et resistance distribution is contained in the LBIC-like signal measured in the galvanostatic circuit and extracted by comparison of the signal distri butions obtained under different applied voltage and laser beam parameters. The samples of the mapping of the resistive properties are presented for m ulticrystalline silicon solar cells without and with selective porous silic on antireflection coating. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserv ed.