Speaker
Level for award<br> (Hons, MSc, <br> PhD)?
MSc
Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution
Prof E.E van Dyk, Ernest.vanDyk@nmmu.ac.za, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> award (Yes / No)?
Yes
Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?
Yes
Abstract content <br> (Max 300 words)
The semiconductor materials used to create solar cells reduces the electrical performance of the device. Light beam induced current (LBIC) measurement is a technique that utilises focused light to probe a solar cell device and characterise it with respect to the spatial variation of photo-generated current. By scanning the beam probe across a solar cell while measuring the I-V characteristics at each point, a map of photo-response and various device performance parameters may be extracted.
In this study a high resolution LBIC system was designed and constructed. In order to determine the effect of various parameters on the performance of a solar cell, a device parameter extraction gradient-decent optimization algorithm was created. The algorithm minimizes the area between the light current-voltage (I-V) curve generated from the device under point-illumination and the I-V curve generated using the diode equation. The algorithm thus locates the optimal parameters to the diode equation to yield a best-fit to the experimental data. This paper discusses the optimisation of the design of the LBIC system, the software interfacing of the data acquisition system and parameter extraction algorithm used.
