Characterization of metastabilities in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin-film solar cells by capacitance and current-voltage spectroscopy

Metastabilities in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS)-based solar cells induced by red light illumination, blue light illumination, and voltage bias treatment are investigated by admittance spectroscopy, capacitance-voltage profiling, thermally stimulated capacitance, and temperature dependent current-voltage (IVT) measurements. It is found that the characteristic N1-admittance response exhibits changes in the activation energy after light soaking and forward bias treatment, whereas no significant change of the activation energy is observed after reverse bias treatment. A roll-over effect is observed in the IVT characteristics for conditions of the sample for which the N1-activation energy is larger than 100 meV. We show that these results are in good agreement with a recently proposed interpretation of admittance spectra, which relates the N1 signature to a back-contact barrier in CIGS solar cells. We also show that, within this model, the changes in the IV characteristics upon light soaking with blue light can be consistently explained with metastabilities in the CdS buffer layer. Furthermore, distinct activation energies for the relaxation dynamics of the red light soaking (Erel = 270 meV) and reverse bias effect (Erel = 730 meV) are observed, which indicates that both phenomena have different physical origins.