Determination of minority carrier lifetime and effective back surface recombination velocity in BSF silicon solar cells from transient measurements

The method of determining the base lifetime ?B and the effective surface recombination velocity Seff in a BSF solar cell from the transient decay of open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current is extended to include emitter recombinations. If the emitter recombinations in modern Si solar cells are neglected in interpreting the experimental data, the experimental value of Seff is found to be in large error.