The influence of ideality factor on fill factor and efficiency of solar cells

Abstract

The most important output characteristics of solar cells, fill factor and efficiency strongly depend on fundamental physical properties of semiconductor materials, such as mobility. lifetime of charge carriers, diffusion length, as well as on the type of transport processes in the device. Ideality factor is considered the most direct indicator of the dependence of output characteristics of solar cells on the electrical transport properties of the cell, that is junction. The results obtained by investigating the influence of ideality factor values on the quality of solar cell as photovoltaic generator are presented in this paper. Since fill factor and efficiency are main indicators of solar cell's quality, better understanding of the physical processes leading to their decrease with the increase of the ideality factor is crucial for optimization of the input parameters, and at the same time for obtaining high quality solar cells.