Photovoltaics Characterization: An Overview

In order to move to a next generation of characterization methods, the requirements must be fully understood and documented. Presented herein are the required functionalities for the next generation of characterization methods. This paper is not meant to be exhaustive, but instead presents new developing characterization methods. The basic characterization requirements are outlined in theintroduction. It is expected that in the future, phenomena will be understood on the atomic scale and applied to large-scale arrays for a complete understanding of the various affects that determine the real cell efficiency. There is a need for a fundamental understanding from atomic and nanoscale characterizations of impurities, native defects, extended defects and interfaces to provide thenecessary understanding of these types of PV cells. This information from fundamental probes should be used for input to the performance characterization of the developing technologies, which include high-flux operation, multijunction and lower band-gap systems. These methods will allow new materials to come to realization at a much faster rate than was possible in previous years.