Modelling and measurement of the metastable defect distribution in chalcopyrite-based thin film solar cells

Abstract: Metastable behaviour in chalcopyrite-based solar cells is often related to the presence of intrinsic defects in the absorber layer which can change configuration through thermally activated transitions. The facilities to model these defects have recently been introduced in the software SCAPS (a one-dimensional solar cell simulator developed at the University of Gent and freely available to the research community). The presence of these defects leads to strongly non-uniform defect densities which can explain admittance spectroscopy measurement results under different bias conditions. In particular the appearance of a peak with a characteristic energy of about 0.13eV which only appears when the spectrum is measured under forward bias conditions can be related to the presence of the IIICu-defect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]