Investigation of the photovoltaic performance of the polycrystalline silicon p–n junction by a photothermal measurement

For establishing a new methodology for evaluating an effect of the grain boundaries, both the piezoelectric photo-thermal (PPT) and the surface photo-voltage (SPV) measurements of polycrystalline Si p–n junction samples with different volume fractions of grain boundaries were carried out. We could define the signal intensity ratio of SPV/PPT as the key indicator of photovoltaic performance. This is because the PPT signal implies the phonon emitting carrier loss, whereas the SPV denotes the photo-excited carrier accumulation at the surface and the junction interface. It was found that the SPV/PPT ratio and solar cell efficiency decreased with increasing volume fraction of the grain boundaries. Present experimental results demonstrated that one can directly estimate the photovoltaic performance of in-process polycrystalline Si p–n junction wafer by adopting the combination of the PPT and the SPV methodologies without electrodes. Since the PPT detects the non-radiative recombination process, present methodology and the laser-beam-induced current and the photoluminescence imaging methods are complementary. By complementary use of these methods, it becomes possible to investigate the characteristic of grain boundary.