Simultaneous determination of carrier lifetime and net dopant concentration of silicon wafers from photoluminescence

Abstract

A simultaneous determination of injection dependent minority carrier lifetime and net dopant concentration in crystalline silicon wafers from quasi-steady-state photoluminescence (QSSPL) is theoretically derived and experimentally implemented. The time shift between maxima of a time modulated irradiation intensity and the respective photoluminescence intensity is linked to effective minority carrier lifetime. In addition, the ratio of peak curvatures of irradiation intensity and photoluminescence intensity reveals the net dopant concentration of the respective material. Thus, we found a luminescence based technique to determine injection dependent minority carrier lifetime in silicon wafers, which requires a priori information neither about carrier mobilities nor about net dopant concentration.