We discuss results of our investigations toward understanding bulk and surface components of light-induced degradation (LID) in low-Fe c-Si solar cells. The bulk effects, arising from boron-oxygen defects, are determined by comparing degradation of cell parameters and their thermal recovery, with that of the minority-carrier lifetime (T) in sister wafers. We found that the recovery of T in wafers takes a much longer annealing time compared to that of the cell. We also show that cells having SiN:H coating experience a surface degradation (ascribed to surface recombination). The surface LID is seen as an increase in the q/2kT component of the dark saturation current (J02). The surface LID does not recover fully upon annealing and is attributed to degradation of the SiN:H-Si interface. This behavior is also exhibited by mc-Si cells that have very low oxygen content and do not show any bulk degradation.

The world of today must face up to two contradictory energy problems: on the one hand, there is the sharply growing consumer demand in countries such as China and India. On the other hand, natural resources are dwindling. Moreover, many of those countries which still possess substantial gas and oil supplies are politically unstable. As a result, renewable natural energy sources have received great attention. Among these, solar-cell technology is one of the most promising candidates. However, there still remains the problem of the manufacturing costs of such cells. Many attempts have been made to reduce the production costs of “conventional” solar cells (manufactured from monocrystalline silicon using diffusion methods) by instead using cheaper grades of silicon, and simpler pn-junction fabrication. That is the ‘hero’ of this book; the heterojunction solar cell.

Lifetime spectroscopy is one of the most sensitive diagnostic tools for the identification and analysis of impurities in semiconductors. Since it is based on the recombination process, it provides insight into precisely those defects that are relevant to semiconductor devices such as solar cells. This book introduces a transparent modeling procedure that allows a detailed theoretical evaluation of the spectroscopic potential of the different lifetime spectroscopic techniques. The various theoretical predictions are verified experimentally with the context of a comprehensive study on different metal impurities. The quality and consistency of the spectroscopic results, as explained here, confirms the excellent performance of lifetime spectroscopy.