Noise as a tool for non-destructive testing of single-crystal silicon solar cells

Low-frequency noise measurements used for semiconductors light active devices

“…The constant is quite ideally equal to 1 and is quite equal to 2 (for commercial silicon a solar cell, the value little deviates from the theoretically assumed value of 2) It is known that most failures result from latent defects created during the manufacture process or during the operating life of the devices [6]. The sensitivity of excess electrical noise to this kind of defects is the main reason for investigating and using noise as a diagnostic and prediction tool in reliability physics for the semiconductor device lifetime assessment [4,12]. The noise spectral density depends on the applied stress and induced damage and varies among nominally identical devices.…”

“…All types of noise, thermal, shot, generationsrecombination and 1/f noise play a different role in reliability analysis. The correlation between noise in a device, its reliability and why conduction noise, especially 1/f noise, is a quality indicator for devices [3,4]. Opportunities and limitations to use low/frequency noise as a diagnostic tool for device quality discuss Vandame [5].…”

Low–Frequency Noise Measurements Used For Quality Assessment Of GaSb Based Laser Diodes Prepared By Molecular Beam Epitaxy

“…The defects are the natural sources of the excess current and the excess noise and they are responsible for the changes of several measurable quantities. Physical processes in electronic devices can give a useful piece of information on the device reliability provided there is a correlation with failure mechanism [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. It is known that most of failures in the flat region of the "bathtub curve" of the failure rate result from the latent defects created during the manufacture processes or during the operating life of the devices.…”

Low frequency noise in polycrystalline p-&#x03B2;-FeSi<inf>2</inf>/Ge heterojunction solar cells

“…The excess noise sources include flicker noise, burst noise, generation-recombination (G-R) noise and random telegraph signal [1]. The idea of using low-frequency noise measurements for analyzing device technologies, defect analysis and reliability study has been reported by many research groups, including Van der Ziel et al [2], Vandamme et al [3], Kleinpenning et al [4], Sikula et al [5], Jones [6] and Chobola [7,8], which led to the advent of reliability physics. Although Dubow and Osterwald [9] was one of earlier researchers to propose noise measurements for device reliability estimation, in 1980, Kleinpenning et al [4] presented the detailed theoretical background and experiments of 1/f noise for various types of silicon p-n diodes with predictions on the device lifetime of photovoltaic modules.…”