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Surface and bulk passivation of multicrystalline silicon solar cells by ...

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41<br />

surfaces <strong>and</strong> interfaces are more likely to contain impurities since they are exposed<br />

during the device fabrication process.<br />

As discussed above, the trap-assisted recombination is described <strong>by</strong> the SRH<br />

theory. In order to calculate the recombination rate, a number <strong>of</strong> simplifying assumptions<br />

are made [79] :<br />

(a) no radiative recombination or Auger recombination;<br />

(b) the semiconductor is not degenerate;<br />

(c) the energy level <strong>of</strong> the defects does not change with charge condition;<br />

(d) the relaxation time <strong>of</strong> the charge carriers caught <strong>by</strong> the defect is negligibly<br />

small compared to the average time between two emission processes;<br />

(e) the defect concentration is very small compared to the doping density;<br />

(f) Fermi-Dirac statistics apply;<br />

(g) the defects do not interact with each other (i.e., an electron cannot make a<br />

transition from one defect level to another).<br />

Based on these assumptions, the SRH theory predicts the following recombination<br />

rate Ut (unit cm-3/s) for a single -level defect located at an energy Εt [79] :<br />

τρ0 = 1/σpvthΝt τnO TnO = 1/σnvthΝt<br />

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