Effect of internal electric field in c-Si solar cells

Built-in electric field of the P-N junction is expected to support the separation and enhance the collection of the charge carriers generated in solar cell absorber. If this is a case, the distribution of the electric field across the solar cell absorber should affect the device performance. Comparative modeling of P-N junction and P-i-N junction solar cells with strongly different distributions of internal electric field was carried out to reveal the performance difference. Detailed simulations show that the photovoltaic characteristics of monocrystalline silicone (c-Si) solar cells with N-type and P-i-N-type absorbers are nearly identical which indicates that the field-assisted carrier transport in the absorber layer is irrelevant to c-Si solar cell operation. Insensitivity of the device performance to the field distribution is explained by exceptionally low level of recombination loss in c-Si.