Within a silicon solar cell, the UV light can cause damage to the passivation layers, to the silicon beneath, and at the interface between the two. The researchers tested a range of silicon cell designs under long-term exposure to UV light, to better understand damage that they could suffer in the field.
This study investigates alternative recovery methods and looks into the deterioration caused by UV radiation in commercial Silicon HJT solar cells. The carrier lifetimes of the samples were measured before and after the HJT solar cells were exposed to ultraviolet radiation.
Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells have garnered significant attention in both academia and photovoltaic industry due to their outstanding advantages, including high open-circuit voltage (Voc), high power conversion efficiency (PCE), low temperature coefficient, and low thermal budget during manufacturing [, , ].
The P–H bonds formation in the n-μc-SiO x:H layers under UV exposure make the series resistance increasing in solar cells. An elevated temperature assisted intensive light soaking could recover UV-damaged H-passivation and P-doping effect.
Upon the introduction of LSPR-enhanced downshifting, the SHJ solar cells exhibited an ∼0.54% relative decrease in PCE degradation under UV irradiation with a cumulative dose of 45 kW h compared to their counterparts, suggesting excellent potential for application in UV-light stability enhancement of solar cells or modules.
The ultraviolet-induced degradation (UVID), with losses of up to 11 % after 2000 h-exposure (Sinha et al., 2023) , impairs long-term stability of silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells at present. However, the mechanism of UVID has remained only roughly understood till now.