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Results of the treatment of multi-crystalline silicon with low-pressure inductive plasma are presented. Plasma treatment was found to increase silicon electrical conductivity to a greater value relative to its initial state; the time to reach this maximum was found to depend strongly on temperature between 120 and 400 °C. An effect of plasma parameters on collection efficiency and diffusion length was observed by EBIC measurements. An actinometry method based on optical emission spectroscopy measurements was used to determine the molar fraction of monatomic hydrogen produced in plasma in the range between 5% and 8% during the treatment. The excitation temperature calculated by Boltzmann's method ranged between 4500 and 8000 K depending on the plasma gas composition, the pressure and the applied power. A model was developed using the CHEMKIN III® software to compute the role of operational parameters in hydrogen–silicon interactions. The aim of this work is to elucidate the relation between the plasma characteristics and the efficiency of hydrogen passivation on multi-crystalline silicon.

The principal subject matter of this work is the application of laser‐induced breakdown spectroscopy for the multi‐elemental analytical characterization of different qualities of solid silicon. The physical process upon which the technique is based is the temporally resolved observation of emission spectra emitted by a micro‐plasma generated by a laser focused on the surface of a given sample. The optimal environmental parameters such as the composition of the buffering gas for the identification and measurement of several metallic, non‐metallic, and dopant impurities were determined. Particular attention was given to boron. A detection limit of 2.10−4 mg/g of boron was found using a calibration curve, which was made in the range of 1 to 100 ppmw. Silicon samples from different production techniques (4C and directional solidification), which permit the segregation of different impurities along the length of the silicon ingot were analyzed using laser‐induced breakdown spectroscopy. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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