In the present work solar cells with a-Si:H and ¦Ìc-Si:H absorber layers were exposed to 2 MeV electron bombardment. The performance of the cells after various bombardment doses and annealing steps was evaluated in view of the changes in the defect density of intrinsic layers, measured with ESR on nominally identical absorber layers irradiated in parallel with the cells.
The defect density was varied over a range of 2 orders of magnitude. In the solar cells a strong degradation of performance is observed upon irradiation with the biggest effect on the short circuit current density JSC for both types of absorber layers. In most cases both VOC and JSC recover after the final annealing step (at 160 ¡ãC) for both types of cells.