Performance Degradation of <I>c</I>-Si Solar Cells Under UV Exposure

Current-Voltage (I-V) and Capacitance-Voltage (C-V) characteristics of crystalline silicon solar cells were obtained under UV exposure. The solar cell parameters degraded with increasing exposure time. For example, open-circuit voltage (V(oc)), short-circuit current (J(sc)), fill-factor (FF) and efficiency (eta) were degraded. In this study, solar cell did not degrade at the p-n junction or silicon substrate effective lifetime by UltraViolet (UV) light exposure. The main degradation occurred at the SiN(x) layer, the commonly used anti-reflection coating (ARC), due to the positive charges generated by the high-energy UV light source. UV light changed the characteristics of the SiN(x) layer and the Si/SiN(x) interface to degrade the cell efficiency.