Application of the Capacitance-Voltage curve to photovoltaic cell characterizations (EIS & CV curve) – Photovoltaic – Application Note 35

Abstract

This note describing how to collect and process photovoltaic impedance data in EC-Lab to generate a capacitance-voltage plot without any need for post-processing or fitting of the raw data. Using existing software features, a C-V plot is easily generated.

Introduction

Capacitance measurement is widely used to carry out semiconductor characterization such as photovoltaic (PV) cells. For example, this measurement is used to determine the doping concentration. In EC-Lab® & EC-Lab® Express software, it is possible to directly plot the capacitance (directly means without any post-process). The capacitance can be obtained with all the Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) techniques i.e. Potentio EIS (PEIS), Galvano EIS (GEIS), Staircase PEIS (SPEIS), Staircase GEIS (SGEIS), “Wait” technique that allows the user to follow up the modulus of Z vs time (PEISW) techniques. Depending on the model circuits considered, two types of capacitance, Cs or Cp, are calculated. The capacitance Cs corresponds to the capacitance of the R+C (in series) circuit and Cp corresponds to the capacitance of the R/C (in parallel) circuit (Fig. 1)

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