EFFICIENCY OPTIMIZATION IN SILICON SOLAR CELLS: THE ROLE OF DOPING AND RECOMBINATION MECHANISMS

Silicon solar cells remain the leading technology in photovoltaics, offering reliability, affordability, and relatively high efficiency [1]. At the same time, further improvements in their performance are limited by intrinsic losses, mainly caused by recombination processes in the bulk of the material. Iron impurities, which are commonly encountered as contaminants, introduce deep energy levels in the silicon bandgap and significantly influence the recombination rate [2].