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Here, we demonstrate the use of an ultrathin TiO2 film as a passivating carrier-selective contact for silicon photovoltaics. The effective lifetime, surface recombination velocity, and diode quality dependence on TiO2 deposition temperature with and without a thin tunneling oxide interlayer (SiO2 or Al2O3) on p-type crystalline silicon (c-Si) are reported. 5-, 10-, and 20-nm-thick TiO2 films were deposited by thermal atomic layer deposition (ALD) in the temperature range of 80–300 °C using titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4) and water. TiO2 thin-film passivation layers alone result in a lower effective carrier lifetime compared with that with an interlayer. However, SiO2 and Al2O3 interlayers enhance the TiO2 passivation of c-Si surfaces. Further annealing at 200 °C in N2 gas enhances the surface passivation quality of TiO2 tremendously. From these findings, design principles for TiO2–Si heterojunction with optimized photovoltage, interface quality, and electron extraction to maximize the photovoltage of TiO2–Si heterojunction photovoltaic cells are formulated. Diode behaviour was analysed with the help of experimental, analytical, and simulation methods. It is predicted that TiO2 with a high carrier concentration is a preferable candidate for high-performance solar cells. The possible reasons for performance degradation in those devices with and without interlayers are also discussed.

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The contactless electrical characterization techniques MDP and MD‐PICTS will be presented in this paper. Both methods are predestined for defect investigation in a variety of semiconductors. Due to a so far not reached sensitivity, major advantages of MDP are its high spatial resolution and its measurement speed, which allows for two dimensional inline measurements at production speed. Furthermore a versatile numerical tool for simulations of electrical properties of a semiconductor as a function of defect parameters was developed. MD‐PICTS is a contactless temperature dependent measurement which allows the determination of activation energies of trap levels in the material. To demonstrate the abilities of both methods, measurements conducted at different semiconductor materials, e.g. silicon, silicon carbide, gallium arsenide and indium phosphide, will be presented exemplarily.

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Contact less measurements of the minority carrier “lifetime” and the photoconductivity are widely used to characterize the material quality and to investigate defects in a sample. In order to interpret these measurements correctly and to guarantee comparability between different methods, numerical simulation tools were developed. These simulations allow to account even for very complex defect models, thus, e.g., enabling the simulation of trapping effects. Contrary to the Shockley–Read–Hall model or the widely used simulation tool PC1D nearly no assumptions are made. Furthermore, nonsteady state solutions can be obtained. The simulation approach is explained in detail, along with simulations of the trapping effect on the measured lifetime for different injections, trap parameters, and measuring methods, demonstrating the capabilities of the here presented simulation tool. Temperature and injection dependent lifetime measurements were performed and it is shown how important sample parameters can be extracted using the simulation tool. Additionally an approach is presented to simulate lifetimes for thick samples, where a nonuniform carrier profile has to be taken into account. This enables a comparison of nonsteady state to steady-state lifetime measurement techniques even for thick samples such as ingots.

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