Defect-related electronic metastabilities in chalcopyrite compounds

So far, in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells the metastable behavior of the key parameters, i.e. open circuit voltage, short circuit current and fill factor, and the corresponding defect physics were typically investigated independently. In order to contribute to this issue, we systematically varied between annealed and light soaked state and investigated the influence of these processes on the solar cell parameters as well as on the defect physics. In this work, we attempt to correlate the key parameters of the solar cells and the defect physics by discussing experimental results obtained from temperature dependent current–voltage measurements (IVT) as well as from capacitance voltage (CV), admittance (AS) and deep-level transient spectroscopy (DLTS). A commonly observed defect contribution in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells is the so-called N1 signature. The activation energy of this signature was found to increase upon air-annealing in the dark which goes along with a decrease in the open circuit voltage and the effective doping density. In this paper we will discuss the correlation between annealing-induced shifting of defect energies and the variation of the key parameters.