wafers from the same group of semiconductor wafers is used to assemble a photovoltaic module in step 228 a dielectric layer is deposited on the front surface of the semiconductor wafer in this particular embodiment it is likely that the photovoltaic cells used to manufacture the photovoltaic module are wired together before the dielectric layer was deposited on the front surface of the semiconductor wafer this method could also be performed alternatively by depositing the dielectric layer on the front surface before the rear side of the semiconductor wafer is metallized in this case the measurements performed in step 220 would be performed before the dielectric layer is deposited on the front surface of the semiconductor wafer with the exception of the internal rear reflectance measurement which needs to be performed after the rear side metallization is performed in the following figures equations and tables the following abbreviations are used front surface recombination is abbreviated fsv base contact resistance is abbreviated bc carrier lifetime is abbreviated clt rear surface recombination is abbreviated rsv n doping is abbreviated nd external front reflectance is abbreviated efr and internal rear reflectance is abbreviated irr fig3 shows a table which illustrates a modeling result summary for photovoltaic cell optimization using the pc1d solar cell model pc1d is a one dimensional semiconductor device simulator that is widely used for simulating photovoltaic cells column 300 shows a list of characterization parameters column 302 indicates to what extent a characterization parameter may be used to improve the efficiency column 304 indicates the contribution of the characterization parameter to the model the contribution in column 304 may also be thought of as a.