Investigating dopant diffusion enhancement at grain boundaries in multicrystalline silicon wafers with micro-photoluminescence spectroscopy

Estimation of solidification interface shapes in a boron–phosphorus compensated multicrystalline silicon ingot via photoluminescence imaging

This paper introduces a method for estimating the shape of the solidification front along the height of a directionally-solidified multicrystalline silicon ingot. The technique uses net dopant density images, obtained on wafers via photoluminescence imaging under surface limited conditions, after the impact of grain boundaries is eliminated through an image processing procedure. By modeling the...

Direct comparison of the electrical properties of multicrystalline silicon materials for solar cells_ conventional p-type, n-type and high performance p-type

We compare the recombination properties of three important types of multicrystalline silicon wafers for solar cells, namely conventionally-solidified p-type and n-type multicrystalline wafers, and also the recently developed ‘high performance’ p-type multicrystalline wafers. Three distinct regions of the wafers are examined in detail. These are the intra-grain regions, the grain boundaries, and...

Quantifying carrier recombination at grain boundaries in multicrystalline silicon wafers through photoluminescence imaging

Studying precipitation and dissolution of iron in multicrystalline silicon wafers during annealing

In this paper we study the changes in iron concentrations and distributions in multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafers after annealing in the temperature range of 600-900 o C. The dissolved Fe distributions across mc-Si wafers are obtained by photoluminescence imaging taken before and after dissociation of FeB pairs. The results show that the precipitation of dissolved Fe, both near the grain b...

Applications of carrier de-smearing of photoluminescence images on silicon wafers

Lateral carrier diffusion can lead to significant smearing in photoluminescence (PL) images of silicon wafers with high lifetime or localised recombination centres. A method to de-smear the PL image by applying the continuity equation in two dimensions has been proposed previously and demonstrated on a virtual wafer with simulated carrier diffusion and artificial random Gaussian noise. This wor...