Premium
Identifying the Real Minority Carrier Lifetime in Nonideal Semiconductors: A Case Study of Kesterite Materials
Author(s) -
Hages Charles J.,
Redinger Alex,
Levcenko Sergiu,
Hempel Hannes,
Koeper Mark J.,
Agrawal Rakesh,
Greiner Dieter,
Kaufmann Christian A.,
Unold Thomas
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
advanced energy materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.08
H-Index - 220
eISSN - 1614-6840
pISSN - 1614-6832
DOI - 10.1002/aenm.201700167
Subject(s) - kesterite , carrier lifetime , photoluminescence , materials science , nanosecond , picosecond , semiconductor , optoelectronics , carrier recovery , optics , solar cell , silicon , carrier signal , physics , laser , computer science , czts , telecommunications , transmission (telecommunications)
Time‐resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) is a powerful characterization technique to study carrier dynamics and quantify absorber quality in semiconductors. The minority carrier lifetime, which is critically important for high‐performance solar cells, is often derived from TRPL analysis. However, here it is shown that various nonideal absorber properties can dominate the TRPL signal making reliable extraction of the minority carrier lifetime not possible. Through high‐resolution intensity‐, temperature‐, voltage‐dependent, and spectrally resolved TRPL measurements on absorbers and devices it is shown that photoluminescence (PL) decay times for kesterite materials are dominated by minority carrier detrapping. Therefore, PL decay times do not correspond to the minority carrier lifetime for these materials. The lifetimes measured here are on the order of hundreds of picoseconds in contrast to the nanosecond lifetimes suggested by the decay curves. These results are supported with additional measurements, device simulation, and comparison with recombination limited PL decays measured on Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 . The kesterite material system is used as a case study to demonstrate the general analysis of TRPL data in the limit of various measurement conditions and nonideal absorber properties. The data indicate that the current bottleneck for kesterite solar cells is the minority carrier lifetime.