Spectral response measurement of double-junction thin-film photovoltaic devices: the impact of shunt resistance and bias voltage

Multijunction photovoltaic (PV) thin-film modules are becoming more and more important on the market, due to their low cost and improved module efficiency now well above 10%. The spectral response (SR) measurement of multijunction thin-film cells presents additional challenges with respect to the SR measurement procedure for single-junction devices. Several works have appeared in the last 15 years in the PV literature, describing certain measurement artefacts that typically appear when measuring the SR of multijunction cells without applying an appropriate voltage bias to the entire cell. In this paper, the authors revise the theoretical description of SR measurements on multijunction devices, show how to detect the possible origin of measurement artefacts from the dark SR and show why bias voltage sometimes is not enough to avoid such artefacts or why it is not even necessary. An experimental confirmation of the theoretical approach is finally given.