Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 143 (2015) 406–410

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Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solmat

An empirical method for imaging the short circuit current density

in silicon solar cells based on dark lock-in thermography
Otwin Breitenstein a,n, Fabian Fertig b, Jan Bauer a
a
Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, D-06120 Halle, Germany
b
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), Heidenhofstraße 2, D-79110 Freiburg, Germany

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The most straightforward way to map the photo-induced short circuit current density (Jsc) in solar cells is
Received 19 March 2015 light beam-induced current (LBIC) mapping. Recently several methods for Jsc imaging based on camera-
Received in revised form based photoluminescence and illuminated lock-in thermography imaging were proposed. This letter
30 June 2015
reports an alternative method for Jsc imaging, which is solely based on the evaluation of dark lock-in
Accepted 17 July 2015
thermography images. This method is particularly advantageous to improve the accuracy of dark lock-in
Available online 6 August 2015
thermography based local efficiency analysis of solar cells.
Keywords: & 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Quantitative evaluation
Photocurrent imaging
Lock-in thermography
2D device simulation
Local analysis

The local short circuit current density Jsc,i (i¼ position index) is
one of the basic local parameters for the efficiency of solar cells.
Together with the local dark saturation current density J01,i and its
ideality factor (a measure for injection-dependent recombination)
it governs the local open circuit voltage potential Voc,i in the cell. In
most of previous imaging methods for efficiency-related solar cell
parameters [1–5] Jsc,i is assumed to be distributed homogeneously
across the cell. However, in particular in multicrystalline silicon
solar cells, not only J01 but also Jsc is distributed inhomogeneously
and even may limit the local conversion efficiency [6]. The classical
way to create an image of Jsc is light beam-induced current (LBIC)
mapping [7]. However, this is a sequential and therefore time-
consuming method, and if AM 1.5 data should be obtained, it is
experimentally expensive, since it needs an LBIC system with
different wavelengths [8]. Based on an alternative one-diode
model of illuminated solar cells [9], a photoluminescence (PL)
based method for imaging Jsc was proposed [10]. However, very
recent simulations have revealed that the accuracy of PL-based J01
imaging in local low-lifetime regions, on which this Jsc imaging
method is based on, is insufficient [11]. The main reason is that
this method strongly depends on the model of independent
diodes, each of them being connected with the terminals by an
individual series resistor, which does not hold for a solar cell.
Hence, this PL-based method is obviously not accurate. Recently a
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: breiten@mpi-halle.mpg.de (O. Breitenstein).
Jsc imaging method based on illuminated lock-in thermography
(ILIT) was proposed [12]. This method is based on measuring the
bias-dependent dissipated heat due to the thermalization of the
local photocurrent in the depletion region under weak reverse
bias, well before avalanche multiplication takes place. Eventual
ohmic shunts may be corrected by using an additional dark lock-in
thermography (DLIT) image taken at the cell bias of the ILIT
measurement. Manipulation of the thermalization power density
across the pn-junction was used already earlier for imaging local
avalanche multiplication factors [13]. This ILIT method should
work well, it is robust to series resistance variations and is easily
applicable to arbitrary excitation spectra, since the excitation
needs not to be pulsed [14]. As for other light-induced methods
such as PL imaging and LBIC, the accuracy of these results is
directly influenced by the homogeneity of the illumination
intensity, which may, however, be corrected if known.
In this letter another method for imaging Jsc is proposed, which
is based solely on the evaluation of DLIT images. The advantage of
this method, compared to PL-based Jsc imaging, is that it should be
more accurate. Its advantage to the existing ILIT method is that the
new method appears as a by-product improving the accuracy of
DLIT-based local efficiency analysis [5,15] without needing any
new measurements. Since this is a dark measurement, is also not
influenced by the inhomogeneity of an illumination system. In
particular, it can be applied afterwards to measurements per-
formed in the past.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2015.07.027
0927-0248/& 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 O. Breitenstein et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 143 (2015) 406–410
Based on PC1D simulations (this is a standard software for
performing 1-dimensional solar cell simulations [16]), assuming
an ideality factor of n1 ¼1 for the first diode (the influence of the
second diode is negligible here), it will be shown that local var-
iations of Jsc can be described by local variations of J01, which may
be imaged by evaluating DLIT images taken at various biases [5].
Homogeneous optical properties of the solar cell under test have
to be assumed here, which is realistic for most multicrystalline Si
solar cells having acidic texturized surfaces. The influence of the
gridlines is neglected here, but the influence of the busbars is
regarded for calculating the average Jsc. The final method needs
two fitting parameters, which may be obtained by fitting results of
this method to that of established methods like LBIC.
Two 200 mm thick model cells are simulated here by PC1D, which
represent an industrial standard multicrystalline cell of first genera-
tion (net base doping concentration p0 ¼ 1.5*1016 cm  3, 50 Ω/sqr
emitter, front recombination velocity Sfront ¼ 105 cm/s, emitter frac-
tion of saturation current density J01e
= 550 fA/cm2, full-area Al back
contact, rear recombination velocity Srear ¼600 cm/s), and a modern
PERC cell (Passivated Emitter and Rear, p0 ¼1.5*1016 cm  3, special P
doping profile, Sfront ¼ 2000 cm/s, J10e
= 90 fA/cm2, Srear ¼10 cm/s). In
both cases a parallel resistance of Rp ¼1 was assumed, the front and
rear surfaces were assumed to be optically rough, and a single layer
ARC and typical values for internal reflectances were assumed. These
two different model cells have been chosen in order to check the
possible influence of the cell parameters on the results. For both
model cells an ideality factor of 1 is assumed and the bulk lifetime τb
is varied between 1 ms and 1 ms. Here Srear was assumed to be
independent of τb, which is only an approximation. Four different
illumination modes are simulated, which are AM1.5G and mono-
chromatic illumination at 780, 850, and 940 nm wavelength. For all
monochromatic illumination modes the intensity was chosen so that,
for both cell types, at a bulk lifetime of 100 ms the value of Jsc of the
monochromatic illumination equals that of AM 1.5G illumination.
Table 1 shows the used illumination parameters and the resulting
total generation current densities Jgen after PC1D simulation (cumu-
lative photogeneration) for both model diodes.
For an illuminated silicon solar cell with assumed homo-
geneous optical properties and a certain thickness, the equivalent
current density of all generated carriers Jgen is independent of the
bias and the local lifetime properties. It slightly depends on the
illumination condition (wavelength), since here the intensities
were chosen that Jsc is the same for all illumination conditions at
τb ¼100 ms. Then, neglecting ohmic shunts, the local short circuit
current density Jsc,i is Jgen minus the local diode recombination
current density at short circuit Jrec,sc,i
Table 1
Cell types, PC1D illumination conditions, and fitting parameters A, B, and C.
Cell type, illumination Jgen[mA/cm2] A B[cm2/A] C[A/cm2]
PC1D standard sim., AM 1.5G 35.3 1.95*109 1.1*1018
780 nm 34.6 1.143*109 3.27*1017
850 nm 35.0 1.853*109 3.93*1017
940 nm 36.8 5.0*109 2.4*1018
PC1D PERC sim., AM 1.5G 35.6 1.9*109 1.25*1018
780 nm 35.4 1.1*109 3.0*1017
850 nm 35.6 2.1*109 9.0*1017
940 nm 36.1 5.2*109 3.3*1018
Exp. DLIT  Jsc vs LBIC, AM 1.5G – 2*109 2*1020
780 nm – 7*108 1*1019
830 nm – 1.2*109 7*1019
940 nm – 3.5*109 2.5*1020
407
Fig. 1. PC1D simulation of J01 as a function of τbulk for standard and PERC cell.
Jsc, i = Jgen − Jrec, sc, i (1)
The saturation current density J01 is a measure of the lifetime-
dependent recombination properties. In the dark, for a given for-
ward bias, the total diode recombination current density is
proportional to J01 and exponentially increases with the diode bias.
Hence, the total recombination probability in the dark is propor-
tional to J01 and to the excess carrier concentration at the pn-
junction. Under illumination and short-circuit condition the elec-
tron concentration in the bulk at the pn-junction is close to zero.
Here a profile of diffusion-limited carriers in the bulk nsc(z)
establishes, which depends on the illumination wavelength, the
diffusion constant, the bulk lifetime τb, and the rear recombination
velocity Srear [17]. It can be expected that Jrec,sc, being a measure of
the bulk and backside recombination rate under short circuit,
depends both on J01 and on nsc(z). It will be shown below that,
under short circuit condition and for near-IR illumination,
recombination in the emitter is negligibly small. Fig. 1 shows the
dependence of J01 on τb obtained by evaluating PC1D data of Jsc
and Voc at T¼ 25 °C for the two model cells. As expected, with
increasing τb, J01 decreases and reaches a saturation value, which is
significantly lower for the PERC than for the standard cell.
The values of n(z) are given for two positions z ¼20 and
z¼ 100 mm below the pn-junction in Fig. 2. While the simulated J01
data are nearly independent of the illumination wavelength (since
in all cases the same Jsc was assumed, see also Fig. 3; data for
850 nm are shown in Fig. 1), nsc(z) strongly depends on it. In the
middle of the cell (z ¼100 mm) the wavelength dependence of
nsc(z) is stronger than close to the junction (z ¼20 mm), and for
z¼ 100 mm the 850 nm data are lying close to the AM 1.5G data. In
all cases, in the limit of high bulk lifetimes, nsc(z) is nearly inde-
pendent of τb. Note that a constant Srear was assumed here. Under
this condition Jrec,sc,i can be expected to depend linearly on J01,i. For
low bulk lifetimes also nsc(z) decreases with decreasing τb. In this
regime Jrec,sc,i is expected to increase slower than linearly with
increasing J01,i.
For the two cell types considered here (standard and PERC),
first Jgen was calculated for all illumination conditions by PC1D, see
7.0*10  4
the results in Table 1. These data hold for all bulk lifetimes. As
6.33*10  4 mentioned above, the intensity for monochromatic illumination
9.5*10  4 was chosen that, for a bulk lifetime of 100 ms, Jsc for monochro-
2.22*10  3 matic illumination equals Jsc for AM 1.5G for both cells. The weak
5*10  5
differences in Jgen between standard and PERC may be due to a
5*10  5
1*10  4 different free carrier light absorption in the emitter (the PERC
3*10  4 emitter is more lightly doped). Then in all cases Jsc was calculated
– for τb ranging between 1 and 1000 ms by PC1D, and Jrec,sc was
– calculated after Eq. (1). Fig. 3 shows the results for the standard
–
–
cell (a) and the PERC cell (b) as the symbols plotted over J01. Here
J01 was calculated separately for each illumination and bulk
408 O. Breitenstein et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 143 (2015) 406–410
Fig. 2. PC1D simulation of (a) nsc(z) of standard cell, and (b) nsc(z) of PERC cell for two values of z and different illumination conditions (940 nm: red, 859 nm olive, 780 nm
blue, AM 1.5 black). (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Fig. 3. PC1D results (symbols) and fit (lines) of Jrec,sc over J01 for the standard cell (a) and the PERC cell (b). The bulk lifetimes are given.
lifetime condition by evaluating Jsc and Voc. The very weak
dependence of J01 on the illumination wavelength is due to the
different rear surface excess carrier concentrations for different
effective excitation depths, leading to different J01rear contribu-
tions. We see that, as expected, for low values of J01 (high τb), Jrec,sc
depends linearly on J01 and for larger J01 (low τb) sub-linearly. The
results for AM 1.5G are lying closest to 850 nm. This means that, at
least in the cases considered here, monochromatic illumination at
850 nm approximates AM 1.5G illumination quite well with
respect to Jsc imaging. Only for 940 nm, which corresponds to the
highest penetration depth, the values of Jrec,sc are significantly
larger, as are the values of n(z) in Fig. 1.
The simplest way to describe a linear and then slightly bent
curve is a parable. Therefore the empiric method proposed here
consists in approximating this dependence by a square function
with three parameters A, B, and C
2
Jrec,sc = A J01 − B J01 −C
The parameter A defines the slope of the curves in Fig. 2,
parameter B defines the degree of non-linearity towards high bulk
lifetimes, and parameter C defines the average absolute value of Jsc.
The lines in Fig. 3 are the best fit results after Eq. (2), the para-
meters for all illumination conditions are given in Table 1. We see
that Eq. (2) approximates the dependencies quite well, only for
very low lifetimes (1 and 3 ms) and 940 nm illumination there are
minor departures. Also these simulations show that an illumina-
tion wavelength of about 850 nm acts closest to AM 1.5G. All fits
for monochromatic illumination are crossing each other close to
e
Jrec,sc ¼0 and J01 = J01, which is the emitter part of J01. This indicates
that, for this near-IR illumination, the recombination under short
circuit condition is indeed governed by bulk and backside
recombination, hence under this condition recombination in the
emitter is negligible. This does not hold for AM 1.5G illumination,
which also contains short-wavelength contributions.
For a given solar cell to be investigated and a certain illumi-
nation condition, as a rule the value of Jgen is not exactly known.
The PC1D-based values in Table 1 cannot generally be used, since
they also depend on the illumination intensity, the cell thickness,
and on optical properties like the reflectivity, the texturization,
and the backside reflectance. However, if for the investigated solar
cell the average value oJsc 4 is known, e.g. from flasher mea-
surements, the method proposed here can be applied never-
theless, and the number of parameters can even be reduced from
(2) three to two. From Eqs. (1) and (2) follows:
2
Jsc, i = Jgen − A J01, i + BJ01, i + C (3)
The average of (3) over the whole area is
2
A J01, i − B J01, i
⟨Jsc ⟩ = Jgen + C − ∑
i
N (4)
(N ¼number of pixels). This leads to the final result, which only
contains the parameters A and B
 O. Breitenstein et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 143 (2015) 406–410
2
A J01, i − B J01,
i 2
Jsc, i = ⟨Jsc ⟩ + ∑ − A J01, i + B J01, i
i
N (5)
It seems now that the parameter C has no physical meaning
anymore. In reality it governs the average value of Jsc. Only if this
average value is known, C may be replaced leading to Eq. (5).
The method is tested on two industrial 156  156 mm2 sized
multicrystalline solar cells. The one, from which images are shown
here, showed a flasher Jsc of 34.9 mA/cm2 and at the ILIT investi-
gation a mean Jsc of 32.8 mA/cm2, all other Jsc images are referred
to the latter value. For comparison a Jsc image of this cell was also
measured by the ILIT-based method [12]. The DLIT measurements
were performed at 10 Hz partly by using the latest version of the
“PV-LIT” system of the company InfraTec GmbH Dresden (Ger-
many) [18] and partly by using a custom-designed LIT system by
the company IRCAM GmbH [19]. The ILIT measurements were
performed at 40 Hz by using the commercially available system
“IR-MultitoolTM” by the company “Aescusoft GmbH” [20]. LBIC
measurements were made monochromatically at 780, 840, and
940 nm wavelength, and a map for AM 1.5G was derived from
integrating the spectrum in conjunction with several monochro-
matic LBIC maps [8]. The experimentally fitted parameters A and B
for these illumination conditions can be found in Table 1.
Fig. 4 shows results of monochromatic illumination at 940 nm,
since here the LBIC contrast was largest. Fig. 4(a) shows the J01
image of this cell, which was obtained by evaluating 2 DLIT images
measured at flock-in ¼10 Hz and V ¼ þ0.55 and þ0.6 V by “Local
I–V” [5], assuming a homogeneous effective series resistance of
Rs ¼ 0.6 Ω cm2. Fig. 4(b) shows an LBIC image taken at 940 nm
wavelength, which is scaled to an average of 32.8 mA/cm2. Fig. 4
(c) shows the same LBIC data artificially blurred by the same point
spread function, which is also responsible for the thermal blurring
of the DLIT data. Fig. 4(f) shows the DLIT-based Jsc image obtained
Fig. 4. (a) DLIT-based J01 (0–8 pA/cm2), (b) LBIC at 940 nm (20–40 mA/cm2), (c) artificially blurred LBIC at 940 nm (20–40 mA/cm2), (d) DLIT-based Jsc versus blurred LBIC-
based Jsc in the region framed in (c), (e) ILIT-based Jsc (20–40 mA/cm2), (f) DLIT-based Jsc (20–40 mA/cm2).
409
by Eq. (5) after fitting the parameters A and B for optimum
agreement between (c) and (f). For comparison, Fig. 4(e) shows
ILIT-Jsc data of this cell measured after [12]. Fig. 4(d) shows a plot
of DLIT-based Jsc versus blurred LBIC-based Jsc data in the region
framed in Fig. 4(c). The data in this region are not disturbed by any
busbar or edge effects. This scatter plot was found to be the most
accurate tool for adjusting the parameters A and B. Note that the
Local I–V method replaces the data in the busbar regions by
averaged data outside of this region. Therefore in (f) also the
busbars contain Jsc data, in contrast to LBIC- and also to ILIT-Jsc,
where these regions are shadowed. This difference has been
regarded here by setting the average value of DLIT-Jsc slightly
higher than that of the other Jsc images (34 instead of
32.8 mA/cm2).
We see in Fig. 4 that the general agreement between the
blurred LBIC-Jsc, the ILIT-based Jsc, and the DLIT-based Jsc is good.
As expected from Eqs. (1) and (2), where the linear contribution of
parameter A is dominant, the Jsc images look qualitatively like the
inverted J01 image. Fig. 4(c) shows that for most of the data the
quantitative correlation between DLIT- and LBIC-Jsc is also rea-
sonable. Only in regions with very high J01 (lowest Jsc) DLIT-Jsc
slightly overestimates the recombination activity of the defects.
This is probably caused for this wavelength by the too simple
quadratic approximation made in Eq. (2). The spatial resolution of
the ILIT-based J01 image in Fig. 4(e) is better than that of the DLIT-
based image (f) since for (e) a higher lock-in frequency of 40 Hz
was used than the 10 Hz used for (f). The fit leads for 940 nm
illumination to parameters A¼ 3.5  109 and B ¼2.5  1020 cm2/A,
which are also given in Table 1. These fitting parameters, as well as
the ones experimentally obtained for the other illumination con-
ditions, significantly deviate from the simulated values. The
parameter A appears generally somewhat smaller than expected
and parameter B is clearly larger. Since these data were obtained
410 O. Breitenstein et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 143 (2015) 406–410
on two different cells (AM 1.5 þ940 nm vs. 780 þ830 nm; the first
cell containing significantly stronger J01 maxima, see Fig. 3), it
cannot be excluded that at least parameter B, which is used to
describe the nonlinearity of the Jsc(J01) dependence, also depends
on the used cell. Maybe in future a physically more justified
approximation than (2) can be found to describe this dependence.
We believe that these deviations between the simulations and the
experiments are due to the fact that the simulations were made
for a homogeneous bulk lifetime, but in reality the lifetime in the
poor quality regions is governed by local defects like grain
boundaries, as can be clearly seen in the LBIC image Fig. 4(b). It is
well known that the influence of such local defects has to be
averaged differently to that of homogeneous SRH defects for
describing their influence on luminescence and on J01 [21]. For
describing luminescence imaging, and also for Jsc imaging, the
lifetime averaging has to occur linearly. Hence, in worst case, low
lifetime regions do not contribute to the average. Therefore the
relative influence of low lifetime regions on the averaged lumi-
nescence or Jsc signal cannot be larger than the areal fraction of
these regions. J01, on the other hand, may assume very high values
in low lifetime regions. Therefore the influence of small local low-
lifetime defects is much stronger on J01 than on the average life-
time and on Jsc. This is the reason why, for predicting solar cell
efficiencies, in particular Voc, 1/ τeff (which is for small bulk life-
times proportional to J01) has to be averaged instead of τeff [21].
The strongly increased J01 in positions of recombination-active
grain boundaries has been proven experimentally in [22] and
recently also by high-resolution PL imaging in [23]. The para-
meters A and B in Table 1 describe a correlation between J01 and
Jsc. If, for homogeneous lifetime distributions (as assumed in PC1D)
and for strongly inhomogeneous distributions (as for multi-
crystalline cells) different averaging rules for J01 and Jsc have to be
applied, this leads to different values for A and B in both cases,
which explains the differences in Table 1. If the method described
here is applied to multicrystalline silicon cells, experimentally
obtained values of A and B should be used.
It might be asked for the relevance of an imaging method,
which needs two fitting parameters (A and B) to be applied. Note,
however, that these two parameters have to be determined for a
certain cell type and illumination condition only once by com-
paring the results of this method to that of another established Jsc
imaging or mapping method like LBIC or ILIT-based Jsc imaging
[12]. Once these parameters are known, the method can be
applied to all other cells of this type without further calibration.
The results in Table 1 show that the parameters A and B strongly
depend on the illumination wavelength, but less on the cell type.
This shows that the method should also work with cells having
slightly different parameters. In particular, this method overcomes
the assumption of a homogeneous Jsc previously made in the DLIT-
based “Local I–V” method [5,15], for which the software is avail-
able [24], without needing any additional measurements. In the
latest version of this software the automatic calculation of Jsc(x,y)
by the method proposed here is already included as an option. One
limitation of our method is that, by describing the whole cell by
DLIT-based J01 and the two parameters A and B, it assumes
homogeneous values of the IR emissivity. Therefore it is advisable
to make the DLIT measurements by applying local emissivity
correction. In conclusion, the DLIT-based Jsc imaging method
described here may become a valuable contribution to make DLIT-
based local efficiency analysis more realistic.
Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful to D. Hinken and K. Bothe (ISFH,
Hameln, Germany) and to M. Padilla and E. Schäffer (Fraunhofer
ISE) for performing the LBIC mappings, to J. Greulich and H. Höffler
(Fraunhofer ISE) for valuable discussions and providing the special
P doping profile describing the PERC cell, to I. Geisemeyer and S.
Wasmer (Fraunhofer ISE) for LIT measurements, and to InfraTec
GmbH Dresden (Germany) [18] for cooperation and providing the
PV-LIT system used for part of this investigation.
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