Surface Passivation of Silicon Wafers by Iodine-Ethanol (I-E) for Minority Carrier Lifetime Measurements

Abstract

The effective minority carrier lifetime (τeff) depends upon the quality of surface passivation, which by means of the microwave photoconductance decays (μPCD) method. The effective minority carrier lifetime (τeff) cannot reveal the real bulk lifetime of minority carriers (τb) . We have applied iodine-ethanol (I-E) treatment to silicon surface at different molar concentrations and shown that the effective concentrations ranges was 0.08mol/L~0.16 mol/L, the maximum The effective minority carrier lifetime (τeff) of n-type monocrystalline and p-type monocrystalline was 973.71μs and 362.6μs, respectively. We also accurately evaluate the bulk lifetime of minority carriers by measured with different thickness of silicon substrate.