Fast Quantum Efficiency Measurement and Characterization of Different Thin Film Solar Cells by Fourier Transform Photocurrent Spectroscopy

Abstract

Fourier-transform Photocurrent Spectroscopy (FTPS) was introduced four years ago [1] as a method for fast and very sensitive evaluation of the spectral dependence of the optical absorption coefficient of photoconductive thin films and recently also for the quality assessment of thin film silicon solar cells [2]. In this contribution we refer about the FTPS characterization of different thin film solar cells (amorphous silicon, microcrystalline silicon, micromorph tandem, polymer solar cells) with the main target of a fast quantum efficiency (QE) measurement. Further, we study the possibility of the FTPS-QE measurement of single cell incorporated in the solar module when only the module terminals can be used for contacting. The FTPS measurement has proved to be very fast (time scale of seconds), enabling a quick verification of quantum efficiency and subgap absorption measurement of absorber of different thin film solar cells