Impulse noise in silicon solar cells

Noise measured across forward-biased silicon single-crystal solar cells may serve as a non-destructive reliability indicator. Burst noise, whose source consists of defects in the p-n junction space-charge region, was detected on a number of silicon single-crystal solar cells. The trap activation energies have been calculated from the noise versus temperature plots and activation energy of 0.41 eV was found out in this way. The samples were stressed for 5000 h at a temperature of 400 K and reverse bias voltage U-R = 3 V. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.