Schottky barrier and pn-junctionI/V plots — Small signal evaluation

This paper proposes and examines three different plots for the determination of the saturation current, the ideality factor, and the series resistance of Schottky diodes and solar cells from the measurement of a single current (I)/voltage(V) curve. All three plots utilize the small signal conductance and avoid the traditional Norde plot completely. A test reveals that the series resistance and the barrier height of a test diode can be determined with an accuracy of better than 1%. Finally it is shown that a numerical agreement between measured and fittedI/V curves is generally insufficient to prove the physical validity of current transport models.