Vol. 24 No. 4 (2025): Mapana Journal of Sciences
Research Articles

Mapping Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH) lifetimes with differential photo conductance in Gallium Arsenide solar cells: effect of absorber thickness and electron hole lifetime asymmetry

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  • Aditya N. Roy Choudhury
Aditya N. Roy Choudhury
Independent Researcher, Kolkata, India
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12723/mjs.75.2

Published 2025-12-01

Keywords

  • Solar cells,
  • SRH lifetime,
  • photo conductance,
  • photocurrent

Copyright (c) 2025

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Recombination degrades a solar cell. Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH) recombination occurs in a solar cell due to the presence of defects. Defects control the lifetime of electrons and holes, and in a good solar cell these lifetimes should be as high as possible. Thus, it is a priority to know the SRH lifetimes in a working solar cell with good precision. Only if the lifetimes are measured properly can a protocol on how to increase them by minimizing the defects be followed. Standard methods are available which extracts SRH lifetimes from solar cell test structures. In this work, we use a method which is less costly and complex and applies to solar cells directly rather than test structures. In a GaAs PIN solar cell, we study how a varying absorber thickness and electron hole lifetime asymmetry affect this method, and we suggest a way to read the SRH lifetimes from graphs of simply processed experimental data. A method to find the SRH lifetime for any absorber thickness between 1–100 μm is proposed.

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