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

The article investigates the detrimental effect of nonuniform and uniform crack distributions over a solar cell in terms of open-circuit voltage ( <tex-math notation="LaTeX">V_ oc</tex-math> ), short-circuit current density ( <tex-math notation="LaTeX">J_ sc</tex-math> ), and output power, the latter under a wide range of irradiance conditions. The experimental procedure to detect the cracks relies on electroluminescence (EL) imaging, which is nondestructive and requires a relatively low amount of time. The Griddler software is adopted to translate the EL-taken image into <tex-math notation="LaTeX">V_ oc</tex-math> and <tex-math notation="LaTeX">J_ sc</tex-math> maps. The main findings can be summarized as follows: the nonuniformly and uniformly cracked cells are both jeopardized in terms of output power; 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 all cells affected by nonuniform cracks are severely damaged in terms of fingers and rear busbar, which concur to limit the maximum output current.