Science Alert February 13, 2020
Silicon solar cells containing boron and oxygen suffer from Light Induced Degradation which could be responsible for the 2 percent efficiency drop that solar cells can see in the first hours of use. Using deep level transient spectroscopy and photoluminescence an international team of researchers (UK, Portugal, Belarus, Australia) has observed the conversion of a deep boron-di-oxygen-related donor state into a shallow acceptor which correlates with the change in the lifetime of minority carriers in the silicon. They propose structures of the BsO2 defect which match the experimental findings and hypothesize that the dominant recombination process associated with the degradation is trap-assisted Auger recombination. The new discovery could help scientists make up some of that shortfall…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE