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The Light Soaking Effect - Additional Power

Boost in Thin Film CIGS PV Module
Mr.Manoj Kumar Sharma, Manager-Sales, Q Cells Systems India

Nearly all PV technologies exhibit changes in device performance under extended

continuous illumination. CIGS modules improve their efficiency after being subjected to
illumination which is known as the Light Soaking Effect. In simple words a 100 Wp rated
module may produce 105 Wp when subjected to illumination. The magnitude of this
increase depends on the cell and module technology, irradiance, temperature, electrical
bias and device structure.

C
opper indium
gallium (di)sele-
nide (CIGS) is a
I-III-VI2 semiconductor
material composed of
copper, indium, gal-
lium, and selenium.
The CIGS modules con-
tain a thin film of a semiconductor called
Cu (In,Ga)Se2 or in short CIGS (Figure 1).
This absorber layer is the key technology of
the CIGS module, and enables their smart
looks, efficient energy conversion and high
energy yield. Compared to conventional Si
technology, the CIGS layer is extremely
thin and the cells come out of manufac-
turing already connected in series with no
need for tabbing and stringing.
Figure 1: CIGS Device Structure
- Substrate
What is Light Soaking?
The light soaking effect is related to the
buffer layer of the solar cell. At the inter-
face between the CIGS and the buffer lay-
er a barrier for electrons is created, which
inhibits transport of carriers from the CIGS
to the TCO Layer (Transparent Conducting
Oxides) and to the outside circuit. This bar-
rier can be lowered due to incoming pho-
tons that are absorbed in the buffer layer.
Physically, what happens is that the buffer
layer is photo-doped, which means that
the buffer layer becomes highly n-type,
pinning the bands to the Fermi level .
The effect of the barrier due to the
buffer layer manifests itself in a degraded
fill factor, with a curve shape that looks
similar to that of excess series resistance
(lower Vmpp and lower slope around Voc).
The effect on the IV curve of a CIGS mod-
ule is illustrated in Figure 2. With the ben-
eficial light soaking effect being connected
to absorption in the buffer layer, it is driven
by the absorption of light at shorter wave-
lengths.
Figure 2: IV curves for module before and after
light soaking
The extent and time dependence of
the light soaking effect depends primar-
ily on the dose of the blue light that the
module receives and the initial state of the
buffer layer. Since the buffer layer is defect
doped, as opposed to the impurity doping
used in conventional wafer based tech-
nologies, there is some variation in dop-
ing within the process window. This means
that some modules need more photo-
doping through light soaking to achieve
the ideal heterojunction conditions, while
others are highly doped from the start and
respond less to light soaking. Variations in
CIGS band gap and the thickness of the
buffer layer also play an important role in
how quickly the light soaking effect im-
proves the module performance.
Light Soaking In Other Device Types
Amorphous Silicon
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is one of the ear-
liest thin film PV technologies and exhib-
its a well-known light-induced degrada-
tion effect, in which efficiencies degrade
by ~10-30% in the first several hundred
hours of light soaking. The degradation is
due to the Staebler-Wronski effect (SWE),
first observed as a reduction in the dark
conductivity and photoconductivity of
a-Si:H after light exposure, wherein the
degradation is reversible by annealing at
high temperatures. The SWE occurs due
to the recombination-induced breaking of
weak Si-Si bonds by optically excited carri-
ers after thermalization, producing defect
centres that lower carrier lifetime. Device
recovery occurs upon annealing as defects
are healed.
Cadmium Telluride (CdTe)
CdTe PV devices typically contain an n-type
CdS buffer layer followed by a p-type CdTe
absorber layer and a back-contact metal-
lization layer for current collection. With
long-term light exposure CdTe devices typ-
ically exhibit performance degradation due
to detrimental permanent changes in the
device. The diffusion of Cu ions away from

2 JANUARY|FEBRUARY12 energetica india

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the back contact metallization in CdTe

devices can explain many of the observed
long-term light soaking effects. The back
contact in CdTe forms a diode junction of
opposite polarity to the main junction, lim-
iting performance. The degradation rate
increases with increased temperature and
is significantly faster at 85-100 °C than at
temperatures observed during normal op-
eration, CdTe degradation during extend-
ed light soaking is strongly affected by the
electrical bias condition with open-circuit-
ed devices showing greater degradation
than those operating at max power. This
is believed to be due at least in part to the
retardation of Cu ion migration by internal
electric fields when the devices operate
near max power.

Conclusion
Metastable behaviour could be observed
in all investigated thin-film technologies
(CdTe, a-Si and CIGS). While a-Si and
CdTe mostly show degradation with light
absorption, CIGS shows improvement in
efficiency and module rated power dur-
ing initial light absorption. The increase in
power output is contributed to phenom-
enon called light soaking effect.
Device structure and buffer layer de-
sign contributes a lot to the light soaking
phenomenon. This feature of light soak-
ing is very useful for higher specific yields
(kWh/kWp). As a result of light soaking
the module output increases after instal-
lation in the field, this is like generating
more units from the same size of system
capacity. This will increase the return on
Investment and decrease the monetary
and energy payback time from a solar PV
plant.
Q-Cells thin-film Q.SMART module
technology is now the first in the entire
thin-film sector to achieve a solar module
efficiency of 17.4% (aperture area) and
harnesses a “light-soaking” effect to gen-
erate an average of 2.5 % power boost
above Nominal Power at Standard Test
Conditions when deployed in the field.
This contributes to higher return on invest-
ments and secures yields. With large scale
CIGS plants performing very well across
the globe, the technology is gaining share
in thin film market. One of the very good
features of CIGS technology is additional
power boost with light soaking.

energetica india JANUARY|FEBRUARY12