An effective way to analyse the performance limiting parameters of poly-crystalline silicon solar cell fabricated in the production line Pankaj Yadav a,e , Kavita Pandey a , Brijesh Tripathi b , Chandra Mauli Kumar c , Sanjay K. Srivastava d , P.K. Singh d , Manoj Kumar b, ⇑ a School of Solar Energy, Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gandhinagar 382007, India b School of Technology, Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gandhinagar 382007, India c Cell and Module Technology Division, TATA Power Solar, Electronics City, Bengaluru 560100, India d CSIR-National Physical Laboratory (a part of Network of Institutes for Solar Energy), New Delhi 110012, India e Department of Physics, Marwadi Education Foundation, Rajkot 360003, India Received 27 April 2015; received in revised form 3 August 2015; accepted 14 August 2015 Communicated by: Associate Editor Bibek Bandyopadhyay Abstract This article focuses on the identification of key features that are responsible for the discrepancies in the performance of silicon solar cells fabricated on multicrystalline silicon under the identical conditions. In an experimental approach, direct current (DC) measurement coupled with alternating current (AC) characterisation technique has been employed. The scanning electron microscope analysis reveals an average grain size of few micrometres for all the solar cells and the top surface of least efficient solar cell contains the impurity pre- cipitates with deep cone shaped holes or pits. The DC measurement reveals that the photocurrent density loss follows an exponential behaviour with respect to the current–voltage characteristics for all the solar cells. The analysis of dV/dJ versus (J SC  J) 1 plot and the variation of ideality factor with junction voltage demonstrate that the higher resistive and recombination losses dominate the performance of least efficient solar cell. Impedance Spectroscopy (IS) technique is used to quantify and decouple the various photovoltaic parameters associated with the different physical processes. A lower value of shunt resistance and minority carrier lifetime along with the higher value of series resistance contribute to the higher resistive loss and surface recombination. The experimental results along with the analytical model provide an insight into the loss mechanisms and the use of a simple tool that can be integrated with the conventional photovoltaic testing. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Poly-crystalline silicon solar cell; Recombination kinetics; Minority carrier lifetime; Impedance spectroscopy 1. Introduction In the quest of low cost and high efficiency solar energy conversion device, multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) solar cell demonstrates its ability to fulfil this requirement where power conversion efficiency of >17% is realised with a total worldwide installation of 70% till 2014 (Lee et al., 2011). The performance of a solar cell strongly depends upon the electrical properties of Si wafer, back surface field (BSF), surface passivation and current collector grid, and optical properties of surface texturing, anti-reflection coat- ing (ARC), etc. Green, 1982. Moreover, the different processes taking place at n + –p junction, p–p + junction http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2015.08.005 0038-092X/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 79 2327 5428; fax: +91 79 2327 5030. E-mail address: manoj.kumar@sse.pdpu.ac.in (M. Kumar). www.elsevier.com/locate/solener Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Solar Energy 122 (2015) 1–10