Evaluation of Surface Recombination Velocity by Means of Computational Simulations and I×V Curves

We estimated the reduction of surface recombination velocity (SRV) resulting from the deposition of an Al_0.28Ga_0.72As window layer (WL) on top of a GaAs Solar cell (SC) only by analyzing, simulating and comparing I×V curves. Two samples were analyzed, where the only difference between them was the presence of the WL. We separately calculated the optical changes caused by the introduction of the Al_0.28Ga_0.72As and then we estimated how much of the performance enhancement was due to the optical changes and how much was due to the SRV variation. Our estimation indicated one order of magnitude reduction in SRV (from 1×10⁷ cm/s to 1×10⁶ cm/s).