Investigating the Impact of Cracks on Solar Cells Performance: Analysis based on Nonuniform and Uniform Crack Distributions

The paper investigates the detrimental effect of nonuniform and uniform crack distributions over a solar cell in terms of open-circuit voltage (V_oc), short-circuit current density (J_sc), and output power, the latter under a wide range of irradiance conditions. The experimental procedure to detect the cracks relies on electroluminescence imaging, which is nondestructive and requires a relatively low amount of time. The Griddler software is adopted to translate the EL-taken image into V_oc and J_sc maps. The main findings can be summarized as follows: (i) the nonuniformly- and uniformly-cracked cells are both jeopardized in terms of output power; (ii) the loss corresponding to the cell with nonuniform distribution of cracks is increasingly higher than the uniformly-cracked counterpart as the irradiance hitting the cells grows, and (iii) all cells affected by nonuniform cracks are severely damaged in terms of fingers and rear busbar, which concur to limit the maximum output current.