Auger recombination in heavily doped shallow-emitter silicon p-n-junction solar cells, diodes, and transistors

A rigorous analytic evaluation of an emitter model that includes Auger recombination but excludes bandgap narrowing is presented. It is shown that such a model cannot explain the experimentally observed values of the open-circuit voltage V
OC
in p-n-junction silicon solar cells. Thus physical mechanisms in addition to Auger recombination are responsible for the experimentally observed values of V
OC
in silicon solar cells and the common-emitter current gain in bipolar transistors.