Reverse-Bias Defect Creation in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Solar Cells and Impact of Encapsulation
Author:
Vaas Timon12ORCID, Pieters Bart1ORCID, Gerber Andreas1ORCID, Rau Uwe12ORCID
Affiliation:
1. IEK5-Photovoltaik, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany 2. Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA-Energy) and Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, RWTH Aachen University, Schinkelstr. 2, 52062 Aachen, Germany
Abstract
Reverse breakdown in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) solar cells can lead to defect creation and performance degradation. We present pulsed reverse-bias experiments, where we stress CIGS solar cells with a short reverse voltage pulse of ten milliseconds and detect the electrical and thermal response of the cell. This way, we limit the duration of the reverse stress, allowing us to study the initial stages of reverse-bias defect creation in CIGS solar cells and modules. Our results show that permanent damage can develop very fast in under milliseconds. Furthermore, we find the location of defect creation as well as the susceptibility to defect creation under reverse bias depends strongly on whether the cell is encapsulated or not, where encapsulated cells are generally more robust against reverse bias.
Funder
Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia HGF LLEC Project
Reference23 articles.
1. Molenbroek, E., Waddington, D., and Emery, K. (1991, January 7–11). Hot spot susceptibility and testing of PV modules. Proceedings of the IEEE 22nd Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, Las Vegas, NV, USA. 2. Johnston, S., Sulas, D., Palmiotti, E., Gerber, A., Guthrey, H., Liu, J., Mansfield, L., Silverman, T.J., Rockett, A., and Al-Jassim, M. (2018, January 10–15). Thin-film module reverse-bias breakdown sites identified by thermal imaging. Proceedings of the IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC & 34th EU PVSEC), Waikoloa Village, HI, USA. 3. Reliability implications of partial shading on CIGS photovoltaic devices: A literature review;Bakker;J. Mater. Res.,2019 4. Silverman, T.J., Deceglie, M.G., Deline, C., and Kurtz, S. (2015, January 9–10). Partial shade stress test for thin-film photovoltaic modules. Proceedings of the SPIE Reliability of Photovoltaic Cells, Modules, Components, and Systems VIII, San Diego, CA, USA. 5. Wendlandt, S., Berendes, S., Weber, T., Berghold, J., Krauter, S., and Grunow, P. (2016, January 20–24). Shadowing investigations on thin film modules. Proceedings of the 32nd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, Munich, Germany.
|
|