science lifetime 2
TRANSCRIPT
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Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 0 (2002) ]]]]]]
Defect and impurity diagnostics and process
monitoring
Wilhelm Warta*
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), Oltmannsstr. 5, 79100 Freiburg, Germany
Abstract
The review focuses on four areas of defect and impurity diagnostics: (i) the determination of
parasitic resistances, (ii) quantum efficiency analysis including light-beam-induced current
measurement systems which use spectrally resolved currents to determine local recombination
in solar cells, (iii) methods to determine the recombination properties in solar cell precursors
and (iv) techniques suitable for the recognition of the type of impurity or defect, which is
responsible for increased recombination. In general, emphasis on those methods, which are
capable of delivering spatially resolved information. The use of the specific metastability
features of a defect for its identification is exemplified. In addition, carrier lifetime
spectroscopy methods utilising the temperature or the injection dependence of defect
recombination are outlined.r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
Keywords: Silicon solar cells; Defects; Impurities; Process monitoring; Carrier lifetime
1. Introduction
Process monitoring for the recognition of defects and impurities in silicon solar
cells is beneficial in several aspects: The main and immediate use is the detection of
the origin of failures or faults in the cells. The knowledge of the factors limiting the
performance of a production solar cell is, on the one hand, also the basis for
improvements in the present processing scheme and for the design of new cell
technologies. Design of future high throughput process lines will rely more and more
on the detailed knowledge gained in the analysis of actually manufactured cells.
Presently silicon solar cell production process monitoring is mainly restricted to
optical inspections and IV performance tests on the final cells. Frequently used tests
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3B2v7:51cGML4:3:1 SOLMAT : 2486
Prod:Type:com
pp:1213col:fig::NILED:Ravi=BG
PAGN: indira SCAN: Bindu
*Tel.: +49-761-4588-192; fax: +49-761-4588-250.
E-mail address: [email protected] (W. Warta).
0927-0248/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
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are off-line measurements of emitter sheet resistance, and technological parameters
like metal thickness and optical inspection of AR coatings. Recombination, i.e.
carrier lifetime monitoring is not yet used widely, partly because of uncertainty
concerning the relevance of the measured numbers for the final cell. Here, oneimportant step forward may come with the application of quasi-steady-state
techniques for in-line monitoring. These techniques are summarised in a recent
review [1] and will be mentioned only briefly.
The inclution of spatially resolved data in comprehensive performance and
technology monitoring and modelling is a rewarding future field, since the potential
value for the detection of failure origins is high. Emphasis is, therefore, on those
methods, which are capable of delivering spatially resolved information.
Defects and impurities are taken into account, which may be originating from
the starting material or could be introduced by the solar cell process and include
also defective emitter, space charge region, passivation layers or metallisation.
In the first part, an overview will be given of methods to determine and image
parasitic resistance losses. In the second part, quantum efficiency (QE) analysis is
addressed. Also, light-beam-induced current (LBIC) techniques which include a
certain degree of spectral analysis are reported. The third part reviews methods for
determining recombination properties in starting wafers and solar cell precursors.
Emphasis is on new achievements like the imaging of the carrier density by infrared
transmission. The fourth part then focuses on methods to recognise the type of
impurity responsible for increased recombination. The use of the fingerprints of
metastable defects and recently investigated carrier lifetime spectroscopy methodsare presented.
2. Determination of parasitic resistance in solar cells
Reduced fill-factors as revealed by illuminated IV measurements are usually
attributed to parasitic resistance-like series or contact resistance due to insufficient
metallisation or excessive emitter sheet resistance or parallel (shunt) resistance losses.
This is a common, but not the only origin: Fill-factor losses may also arise from
injection-dependent recombination processes, which lead from a decreased excesscarrier density at lower forward voltage to an increased recombinative dark current.
This was demonstrated for the strongly injection-dependent surface-recombination
velocity at the oxide-passivated rear surface of PERC cells [2] and for injection
dependent volume lifetimes in mc-silicon [3].
The global shunt resistance as well as the dark series resistance may be deduced
from a fit to the dark IV curve. The lighted Rs; which is the relevant value foroperating conditions, may differ from the dark one due to the different current paths
for injection at the junction for dark forward bias compared to the collection of the
light-generated current in the illuminated case [4]. Lighted Rs is accessible from the
irradiation dependence of Jsc and Voc (JscVoc curves, see e.g. [5]) and from thedifference between the illuminated IV-curve and the illuminationVoc curve [6]:
An IV curve without series resistance loss may be obtained even before front
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metallisation by probing the n+ layer, measuring the irradiance-dependent Voc and
constructing an IV curve by application of the superposition principle.
A newly developed commercially available instrument allows measurements of the
local contact resistance, i.e., problems in contact formation on a finished solar cell.The cell surface is scanned with a probe tip under illumination and the local potential
drop is monitored [7]. Recently, contactless thermography for monitoring defects in
solar cells [8] has been brought forward, closer, to the step from research to
application level. The decisive advance consisted of the pulsed application of a
forward bias and the use of lock-in technique for the detection of the heat dissipated
in shunted areas. This boosted the sensitivity to better than 10mK. Lock-in
thermography may be applied for the localisation of dominating shunts or the
characterisation of shunt distributions. The correlation with production peculiarities
like the edge treatment, wafer handling or printing defects often directly point at the
origin of the problem. A quantitative evaluation of the relevance of the observed
resistive loss patterns for the total performance of the solar cell is presently not
available.
Four-point probe resistivity mapping is important for the qualification of starting
material, the detection of faults in the dopant distribution, as well as for the
monitoring of homogeneity and reproducibility of n+ or p+ diffusions. Stepping
systems are available as commercial equipment; high-resolution apparatus applying
sophisticated evaluation techniques in order to identify grain boundary effects have
been developed [9]. Progress towards fast measurement speed with coarse spatial
resolution has recently been made at Fraunhofer ISE with a system, which does notprobe step by step, but instead uses an array of 100 4 needles to contact 100
measurement points on a 15 15cm2 area in one step. Individual measurements are
taken using a relay box. The present set-up reduces the measurement time by about a
factor of 8 compared to commercial equipment; further improvements by applying
e.g. electronic switching are straightforward.
3. Quantum efficiency (QE) analysis and spectrally resolved LBIC
QE analysis is a powerful tool, which gives local information about the emitter inthe short wavelength, bulk lifetime, rear surface recombination and light trapping in
the long wavelength region. The possibility to measure currents with high local
resolution allows to attribute reduced performance to defective cell regions.
Crucial for the current modelling, which is necessary for the extraction of cell
parameters, is the optical cell model. Accurate ray tracing approaches are available
[1012], but they are usually too time-consuming for direct application in QE
evaluation used for process monitoring. For a specific manufacturing line, it might,
however, be beneficial to establish a series of standard generation profiles calculated
once using ray tracing. A simplified analytical approach including surface texture
and wavelength-independent reflection coefficients and angles for the front and rearinternal reflectivity was established and analysed in detail by Basore [13]. For
analytical electrical modelling of the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) Basore [13]
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also introduced a convenient scheme: Linear approximations of the inverse IQE
versus light penetration depth were derived for the wavelength range in which no
appreciable fraction of the incident light reaches the rear surface (characterised by
the effective diffusion length Leff), and for the long wavelength range, where lighttrapping fully equalises the generation distribution (characterised by the collection
length Lc). By condensing the optical model to the rear surface reflectivity Rb as the
main decisive parameter, an evaluation of these two linear regimes allows the
determination of base diffusion length Lb; rear surface recombination velocity Sband the optical rear reflectivity Rb: The limits imposed by the significance of theinfluence of the parameters on the measured IQE are also discussed. For this control,
a confidence plot in the Lb; Sb-plane was found to be very useful [14]. Withreduced cell thickness, improved material and improved rear surface passivation
quality production cells come closer to the limits of Basores analytical approach.
This was recently noted by Spiegel et al. [15], who proposed to extend the linear Leff-
approximation allowing curvature of IQE1(a1) by introducing Sb as a second
parameter. Provided a sufficiently high measurement accuracy can be realised,
separation of base and rear surface recombination may be deduced from the degree
of curvature. The extended approximation is especially interesting for fast (e.g.
LBIC) applications.
The next degree of approximation is the fit with a numerical electrical model, e.g.
PC1D [16]. Thus, the full information contained in the IQE-curve is utilised. The
generation function may either be taken from the optical model integrated in PC1D or
provided externally e.g. from a ray tracing simulation. It is important to note that thepossible range of the fit parameters, i.e., the sensitivity, must be checked by comparing
the effect of a variation in the respective parameter to the measurement error.
Quite often, the shape of the IQE-curve already gives a clear indication of the
dominating mechanism. For the reduced QE on a thin PERC cell with rear
passivation processed on a caustic etched surface (within the THIMOCE project),
this is demonstrated in Fig. 1. In contrast to the assumption of a well-passivated rear
surface with bad optical reflection (left), the case, Fig. 1 (right), where increased
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400 600 800 1000 12000.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Rrear[%]
97
90
70
30
0
measured:
NaOH etched rear
IQE
Wavelength (nm)
400 600 800 1000 12000.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Sback [cm/s]
100
1000
3500
1e6
measured
NaOH etched rear
IQE
Wavelength (nm)(b)(a)
Fig. 1. Comparison of a measured QE curve (symbols) to PC1D simulations assuming (left) reduced light
trapping (parameter internal reflectivity of rear surface Rrear) or (right) increased rear surface
recombination velocity Sback:
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surface recombination velocity and very high internal reflectivity is assumed, is
clearly the appropriate one.
Special care must be taken, when attempting a QE analysis for a cell with strongly
injection-dependent recombination properties. Since the measurement is usuallydone with chopped low-intensity monochromatic light and the injection density is
adjusted by additional white bias light (small signal measurement), a differential
QE is obtained [17,18]. Depending on the degree of the non-linearity of the
recombination, for an accurate analysis, the actual QE must be obtained by
measuring and integrating the full bias-light dependence. Since this is, in general,
impractical for process diagnostics, often a good approximation for the 1-sun
behaviour of the cell is a QE measurement taken with reduced bias intensity of e.g.
700 W/m2. As an example for the strong impact of non-linear rear surface
recombination on the result of QE measurements in Fig. 2, two measured spectral
response (SR) curves (Fig. 2, left) for illumination with two different bias light
spectra (Fig. 2, right) are shown. Although, in both cases, the bias light is adjusted to
give the same current, the increased carrier density due to the shift of the generation
profile into the depth of the cell reduces rear surface recombination and results in a
strongly increased spectral response.
Light-beam-induced current (LBIC) measurements allow high spatial resolution in
the tenth of mm range. Several differently focussed laboratory set-ups have been
developed. At the University of Marseilles [19], the full spectral capability was
integrated into an LBIC system by using a monochromator. The additional
availability of measurements at low temperature makes this a very versatile tool fordefect recognition on the research lab level. Apparatus which includes illumination
at several wavelengths using laser diodes have been established at TUBA Freiberg
[20] and the University of Konstanz [21]. The Spectrally Resolved (SR) LBIC system
developed at Fraunhofer ISE [22] is specially tuned to fast measurement speed. The
system uses at present 5 different wavelengths in the regime, where the quantum
efficiency is sensitive to base recombination. High measurement speed is achieved by
sine-modulating the five laser diodes with different frequencies, retrieving one
superimposed signal for short circuit current, reflectivity as well as light intensity and
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300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 12000.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
wavelength [nm] wavelength [nm]
diff.spectralresponse[A/W]
bias R3, jbias
= 43.5 mA/cm2
bias B, jbias
= 43.5 mA/cm2
300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 12000
400
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2400
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3200
spectralirradiance[W/(m
2m)]
AM 1.5 global
bias spectrum R2
bias spectrum B
(b)(a)
Fig. 2. Measured SR for an RP-PERC cell (left) illuminated with two different bias light spectra (right);
the bias spectrum R3 used for the SR-measurement differs from R2 only by minor details.
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decomposing it to the contribution generated by the respective wavelength by digital
filtering. In addition, the measurement is not done step by step, but while the light
spot is continuously travelling across the cell.
4. Contactless methods for measuring recombination properties
In this section, a brief review of available contactless methods to measure
recombination properties will be given, followed by two more recent applications.
The determination of local diffusion lengths by the surface photo-voltage (SPV)
technique is available commercially as a mapping instrument [23]. A Fe test modus
using the metastability of the FeB pair was integrated (see Section 5), a feature which
was extensively used for process monitoring.
In the quasi-steady-state photo-conductivity (QSSPC) method [24] the recombina-
tion properties are determined from the excess carrier density following quasi-
statically the generation light of a flash. The method is fast and thus has a high
potential for process monitoring. For a review of the application to process
monitoring, the reader is referred to Ref. [1]. The special strength of the method lies
in the easy access to the full injection dependence of the carrier lifetime. This is used
in the IDLS technique for injection-dependent lifetime spectroscopy (see Section 5).
The determination of emitter recombination is discussed in Ref. [25]. Usually, at low
injection densities, trapping effects dominate the results. An analysis of this part of
the QSSPC curve, which allows to determine the trapping features of defects, wasgiven in Ref. [26]. The introduction of spectrally confined illumination allows, in
principle, the separation of volume and surface [27] or emitter effects [28]. Due to the
measurement of the photoconductivity with an inductive coil, the spatial resolution
is presently limited to several cm2.
In small-signal-measurement techniques, either the decay of the additional excess
carrier density generated by a light pulse [29] or the phase shift of the carrier
response to a sine-modulated generation [30] is used to determine the carrier lifetime.
The injection level is fixed by additional bias light. In contrast to QSSPC, for
injection-dependent recombination processes, differential results are obtained. On
the other hand, small signal techniques use averaging methods and are thus able tohandle the low-signal amplitudes from the small detection volumes necessary for
high spatial resolution. The microwave-detected photoconductivity decay (MW-
PCD) method is available as well-developed commercial instrumentation. Optical
detection, on the other hand, as used in the modulated free carrier absorption
(MFCA) technique [30] allows a wider application range. This holds true also for the
latest version of free carrier absorption techniques discussed in Section 4.2, which
uses an IR camera.
4.1. Carrier lifetime measurements on a highly doped material
It is well known that standard microwave PCD equipment becomes insensitive for
highly doped material. In the MFCA technique, the excess carriers are detected
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optically by the attenuation of an IR probe beam. It was found that this technique is
well suited for carrier lifetime measurements in a range, which is not accessible by
other methods. Fig. 3 gives examples of MFCA carrier lifetime maps on 0.15O cm
wafers from upgraded metallurgical (UMG) silicon.
The material quality is strongly increased by the purification step from carrier
lifetimes below 0.3 ms to about 1.5 ms. The higher impurity content of the unpurified
material is also indicated by the impurity segregation effects around the grain
boundaries observed, on the left, in Fig. 3.
4.2. Infrared carrier density imaging
A new branch of applications of IR absorption on free carriers uses an IR
camera to obtain an image in one step instead of the scanning mode applied
in the MFCA measurements. An IR camera technique was presented first by Bail
et al. [31]. We have recently developed an improved version of this Infrared
lifetime mapping (ILM) technique. Infrared light radiated from a black body at a
specified temperature is transmitted through the wafer. In the present set-up,
a chopped generation laser (l 915 nm) excites minority carriers in the sample.The local attenuation of the transmitted IR light is proportional to the local
free carrier density. Using a CCD-camera, sensitive in the mid-infrared, an image
of the sample is taken with and without excitation light illumination. The difference
between both images represents the spatial carrier density distribution. With
known generation light intensity, local parameters such as bulk lifetime can be
calculated.
The main innovative feature in the method developed at Fraunhofer ISE is the
lock-in thermography approach. The excitation light is chopped with a frequency
between 1 and 20 Hz such that for one half of every period, free carriers are excited in
steady-state condition. The camera images are continuously read out and weightedwith a set of correlation functions synchronised to the excitation light. By increasing
the number of evaluated periods, this lock-in technique reduces the noise and
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Fig. 3. MFCA lifetime maps of wafers from UMG silicon prior to (left) and after (right) an additional
plasma purification step.
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increases the sensitivity of our method significantly. Thus, it is possible to measure
the typical lifetime range relevant for industrial solar cell material. The optical
spatial resolution of the lifetime map depends only on the chosen optical lens system
and the CCD-array, and not on the total measurement time.
Fig. 4 (left) shows a lifetime map based on the carrier density image of a region ofa block cast multicrystalline silicon wafer with silicon nitride surface passivation
(excitation wavelength 990 nm), in comparison to an MW-PCD map (right). The
spatial resolution is 110mm. The structures observed in the IR image after just 1 min
measurement time are excellent. The carrier density measurement by lock-in
thermography allows to obtain a lifetime map in steady-state condition with
288 288 data points in 1 min. This corresponds to a measurement time of 0.7 ms
per point compared to measurement times of about 0.1 s per point in standard
scanning methods.
5. Defect recognition
For the identification of structural defects, various methods based on metallo-
graphical techniques, optical or electron microscopy are available. Dislocation (etch
pit density) maps, for which commercially available equipment was developed in the
recent years are of interest in process monitoring. An important tool for the
assessment of the electrical activity is the electron beam-induced current (EBIC)
contrast. A good starting point may be found in a recent paper presenting a
comprehensive model for the EBIC contrast of decorated dislocations (temperature
and injection dependence) [32].For the recognition of impurities, the classical elemental analysis (e.g. chemical
analysis, mass spectroscopy, etc.) is usually limited to concentrations above 1014
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Fig. 4. Carrier lifetime obtained with the improved ILM technique (left) in comparison to an MW-PCD
lifetime map (right).
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1015 cm3. Lower concentrations are accessible with the well-known deep level
transient spectroscopy (DLTS), which determines the defect parameters from the
capacitance spectroscopy of the carrier reemitted from the defect. We will
concentrate, in the next paragraph, on three techniques which use a carrier lifetimemeasurement and thus, directly look at those defects which are active in
recombination: Defect recognition by metastability and carrier lifetime spectroscopy
by IDLS and TDLS.
5.1. Defect recognition using metastability
The metastability of defects like the well-characterised pairs of transition metals
with boron [23] or the Cz-specific defect [33] open up the opportunity to use the
typical metastable behaviour for impurity identification. The Cz-specific defect (mostlikely a complex involving boron and oxygen) is chosen as the first example.
Comparing details of the behaviour of an unknown defect to the phenomenology of
the Cz-specific defect is a valuable identification tool. In recent work on highly doped
multicrystalline silicon, a metastability of the solar cell performance had been
observed [34]. This metastability was further characterised at Fraunhofer ISE in the
frame of the ARTIST project. Among other properties the reformation of the
recombination active state of the defect under illumination was investigated. For the
Cz-specific defect, for this process, a recombination-enhanced defect reaction was
proven [33]. The transformation from the passive to the active state is induced by the
(weak) recombination at the passive state and followed by an exponential law withthe defect generation time tgen as time constant. A plot of the defect generation rates
1=tgen observed for differently doped Cz material versus doping concentrationfollows a linear dependence in a loglog plot (Fig. 5).
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1015
1016
1017
10-6
10-5
10-4
10-3
10-2
Measured Cz
Fit
Measured ARTIST material
DefectGenerationRate
1/gen
[s-1]
Doping Concentration [cm-3
]
Fig. 5. Dependence of the defect generation rate for the Cz-specific defect on doping concentration. The
value for the unknown defect found in highly doped mc-silicon is included.
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By determining tgen for the highly doped mc-silicon and including it into this
dependence (Fig. 5, star symbol), the excellent compatibility becomes a strong case
for the unknown defect to be identical to the Cz-specific defect.
As a second example, the observation of a strong change of carrier lifetime in the
bottom part of directionally solidified silicon is presented. When measured at low
injection density the lifetime decreases, while for high injection density it increases by
illumination (Fig. 6, left).
Since the change recovers completely during storage at room temperature, anexplanation based exclusively on the Cz-specific defect is clearly excluded, since the
latter is stable in the active state at low temperature. On the other hand, the low
injection lifetime is observed to recover from the degraded state by an annealing
treatment at 2001C and fast cooling. This is not compatible with the FeB pair, which
should be dissociated by the anneal (just like light soaking), while the resulting Fe ishould have the higher recombination activity at low injection. This example
illustrates how the metastability can be used to exclude certain defects. In this case,
the identification of the nature of the defect is left for future work.
5.2. Temperature-dependent lifetime spectroscopy (TDLS)
Injection-dependent lifetime spectroscopy (IDLS) appears thanks to the simple
quasi-steady-state measurement which is quite interesting in process monitoring.
Nevertheless, we will first discuss the experimentally more demanding TDLS
technique, since IDLS is shown later to have quite stringent restrictions. Describing
recombination via a discrete energy level in the upper half of the band gap at a depth
Et below the conduction band edge by the well accepted SRH (Shockley Read Hall)
statistics, we obtain for the temperature dependent excess carrier lifetime at low level
injection, tSRHLLI [35]
lnt
LLISRHT>
T>
const
EC Et
kT>
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0 100 200
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16before light soakingafter light soaking
laser intensity [1012 photons/cm2]
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 3504.0
4.5
5.0
5.5
6.0
Low injection
+ 10 hourlight soakingAnneal at 200
Lifetime[
s]
Lifetime[
s]
Time [min]
Fig. 6. Degradation and annealing behaviour (left) and injection dependence (right) of the metastable
defect observed in the bottom of an mc-silicon block before and after light soaking.
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above a temperature T>: An example for an Arrhenius plot of tLLISRH=T for
intentionally Molybdenum contaminated p-Si with two different doping concentra-
tions is given in Fig. 7.
The energy level is determined with high accuracy, the expected dopingdependence is experimentally verified.
5.3. Injection-dependent lifetime spectroscopy (IDLS)
Since with the QSSPC technique the injection dependence of the carrier lifetime is
accessible readily, the possibility to use this information for defect recognition has
found increasing interest [36]. In Fig. 8, an example is given, where the SRH
recombination model was fit to a measured injection dependence for a Mo-
contaminated sample characterised with TDLS (see Section 5.2). With the energy
level (DE1 0:330 eV) obtained from TDLS, a good fit is only obtained, if anadditional level at DE2 0:247 eV is assumed. What is even more important is thefact that fitting curves may be obtained for a wide range of parameters
(DE1 0:25y0.55 eV, DE2 0:17:..0.25 eV). The method is able to deliverconclusive results only if it is possible to investigate the defect in several differently
doped wafers. This was used for determining the energy level of the active species of
the Cz-defect [36].
6. Summary
In the present overview, a wide range of techniques were presented, which are
partly already available and partly under development at the research lab level.
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2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.010-3
10-2
10-1
ETDLS
= 0.329 +/- 0.003 eV
EDLTS
= 0.34 eV (literature)
NA= 9.9. .1014cm-3, [Mo]=3.71012cm-3
NA
= 1.7.1015
cm-3, [Mo]=1.1.10
12cm
-3
eff
low/
(T.
eff,
300K
low)[1/K]
1000/T [1/K]
250C
200C
150C
100C
50C
0C
-50C
C
-100
ETDLS
= 0.332 +/- 0.003 eV
Fig. 7. TDLS measurements on intentionally Mo-contaminated p-type silicon.
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OOFTools for the characterisation of spatially distributed parasitic resistances are alreadyavailable as first commercial versions. On the basis of the quasi-steady-state
technique, a variety of new applications have been introduced. QE analysis is a
mature technique, which is being transferred in part to LBIC tools. With infrared
absorption techniques new promising instruments for fast steady-state carrier
lifetime maps are under development. Several tools based on lifetime measurements
(metastability analysis, carrier lifetime spectroscopy) are well-suited to identifyspecific defects. In any case, the main challenge will be the transfer of these methods
to a widespread application in industrial solar cell production.
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