Separation of recombination properties of silicon solar cells and wafers via luminescence imaging

This work is dedicated to separating volume recombination from surface recombination in crystalline silicon solar cells and wafers by exploiting reabsorption of luminescence. Due to reabsorption, the local steady state excess charge carrier depth distribution - which contains information about local recombination properties - affects the luminescence spectrum emitted by a device. This depth distribution can be determined by comparing images acquired with several optical short pass filters to a model based on the continuity equation. An algorithm which yields good results for both electroluminescence on silicon solar cells as well as photoluminescence on silicon wafers is introduced and discussed.