PVRD-FASP: A Unified Solver for Modeling Carrier and Defect Transport in Photovoltaic Devices

• Published in: IEEE journal of photovoltaics Vol. 9; no. 6; pp. 1602 - 1613
• Main Authors: Shaik, Abdul R., Brinkman, Daniel, Sankin, Igor, Ringhofer, Christian, Krasikov, Dmitry, Kang, Hao, Benes, Bedrich, Vasileska, Dragica
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.11.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Cadmium compounds; Charge carriers; Charge transport; Chemicals; Computer simulation; Continuity equation; Current carriers; Defect chemical reactions; Defects; Differential equations; drift-diffusion-reaction solver; First principles; Heterojunctions; II-VI semiconductor materials; implicit Euler with Newton iteration; Mathematical model; Mathematical models; Nonlinear differential equations; Nonlinear equations; Photovoltaic cells; Photovoltaic systems; PN heterojunction; Poisson equation; Single crystals; Solar cells; SOLAR ENERGY; transient solutions for continuity equation
• ISSN: 2156-3381; 2156-3403
• DOI: 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2019.2937238

In this article, we present a simulator for modeling transport of charge carriers and electrically active defect centers in solar cells by treating them on an equal footing, which allows us to address metastability and reliability issues. The exact nonlinear differential equations set solved by our solver is presented. The formulation of such differential equations, namely the continuity equations, drift-diffusion equation, and Poisson equation, for studying charge and defect transport is explained. The parameters needed for forming the differential equations are taken from first principle calculations. The solver is verified with test cases built on PN heterojunctions, Cu diffusion in single crystal CdTe and comparing Silvaco simulations with our numerical results.