The Transport and Kinetics of Minority Carriers in Illuminated Semiconductor Electrodes

The differential equation describing the transport and kinetics of photogenerated minority carriers in a semiconductor electrode is solved analytically to obtain a solution in terms of confluent hypergeometric functions. Much simpler approximate solutions are also obtained. Comparison of these solutions with results from the full expression show that the approximate solutions hold to within 5%. A simple physical significance can be attached to the different terms in the approximate solutions. The form of the photocurrent voltage curves that arise from the different solutions is discussed.