Minority carrier dynamics in polycrystalline silicon solar cells studied by photo-assisted Kelvin probe force microscopy

In a solar cell material, minority carrier dynamics such as diffusion length and lifetime are very important because they strongly influence on solar cell performance. In this study, we proposed a method for diffusion length and lifetime measurements by photo-assisted Kelvin probe force microscopy (P-KFM), and investigated the diffusion length and lifetime distribution around a grain boundary in a polycrystalline silicon solar cell.