The behavior of series resistance of a p-n junction: the diode and the solar cell cases

Poliana H. Bueno; Diogo F. Costa; Alexander Eick; André Carvalho; Davies W. L. Monteiro

doi:10.1117/12.2213229

14 March 2016 The behavior of series resistance of a p-n junction: the diode and the solar cell cases

Poliana H. Bueno, Diogo F. Costa, Alexander Eick, André Carvalho, Davies W. L. Monteiro

Proceedings Volume 9743, Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices V; 97431F (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2213229
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2016, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison of the impact of the internal parasitic series resistance of a p-n junction, as seen from the microelectronics and photovoltaic communities. The elusive thermal behavior of the aforementioned resistance gave this work its origin. Each community uses a different approach to interpret the operational current-voltage behavior of a p-n junction, which might lead to confusion, since scientists and engineers of these two realms seldom interact. An improvement in the understanding of the different approaches will help one to better model the performance of devices based on p-n junctions and therefore it will favor the performance predictions of photovoltaic cells. For diodes, series resistance is usually determined from a specific forward-bias region of the I-V curve on a semi-logarithmic scale. However, in Photovoltaics this region is not commonly reported and therefore other methods to determine Rs are employed. We mathematically modeled an experimentally obtained I-V curve with various pairs of the ideality factor and Rs and found that more than one pair accurately synthesizes the measured curve. We can conclude that the reported series resistance not only depends on physical parameters, e.g. temperature or irradiance, but also on fitting parameters, i.e. the ideality factor. Generally the behavior of a p-n junction depends on its operating conditions and electrical modeling.

Citation Download Citation

Poliana H. Bueno, Diogo F. Costa, Alexander Eick, André Carvalho, and Davies W. L. Monteiro "The behavior of series resistance of a p-n junction: the diode and the solar cell cases", Proc. SPIE 9743, Physics, Simulation, and Photonic Engineering of Photovoltaic Devices V, 97431F (14 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2213229

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