Status review and future perspectives on mitigating light-induced degradation on silicon-based solar cells

Silicon-based solar cells and modules currently constitute the majority of photovoltaic systems deployed globally with a market share exceeding 90%, stemming from the maturation of this technology and a rapid mass-production globally. Improving the constituent solar cells' performance and stability under sunlight illumination has been a keen topic of research and commercial interest given the long-expected deployment periods (> 20 years). One of the common issues affecting stability is the phenomenon of light-induced degradation (LID) and light and elevated temperature-induced degradation (LeTID), which leads to an undesired performance drop in solar modules and resulting financial losses. In this review, several important insights are discussed - starting with the underlying mechanism for LID and LeTID, adopting alternative p-type silicon materials, followed by a compilation of ongoing efforts aimed towards the recovery of cell performance focusing on illuminated regeneration and current injection regeneration, and finally, a critical comparison of these strategies. Overall, it is shown through the above discussions that the performance of solar cells improves significantly after the regeneration process across both p-type and n-type substrate materials as well as different solar cell architectures; thereby demonstrating the commercialization potential for the regeneration process. Future perspectives for adopting alternative silicon materials as well as the discussed regeneration tools and technologies are also presented in detail.

Automated summary

This article discusses the stability issues of silicon-based solar cells under sunlight illumination and the research on improving performance through the use of alternative silicon materials and regeneration technologies. The results show that the performance of solar cells significantly improves after the regeneration process.