LED Array Frequency Dependent Photocurrent Imaging of Organic Solar Cell Modules

Abstract: To mitigate the risk for devastating climate changes, there is an urgent need to change the energy production from the current fossil based to renewable sources. Solar cells will contribute to an increasing share of the future energy systems. Today silicon solar cells dominate the market but printed organic solar cells are promising alternatives in terms of cost, flexibility, possibilities for building integrations and energy payback times. Printing enables roll-to-roll processing that is quick and renders huge volumes. Thus, also characterization and quality control must be fast. Recent tests have been performed showing that a LED array with amplitude modulated LEDs can be used to provide photocurrent images of modules with series connected sub cells in-line during manufacturing. The purpose of this thesis work is to further evaluate and develop this LED array characterization technique focusing on contact methods and signal interpretation. Two modes were examined; a contact mode and a capacitive contact-less mode. Both modes gave comparable results and indicated strong variations in performance of sub cells in the measured modules. Other methods to address individual cells also showed similar behavior. However, by manually adding extra contact points, current-voltage curves could be measured on the individual sub cells in the modules. Extraction of photocurrents were similar, but the parallel resistances varied strongly between the cells in the module. Increasing the frequency of the LEDs resulted in less variations. Calculations indicated that this frequency dependence could be used to separate the photocurrent generation and parallel resistance in the sub cells.