The impact of surface damage region and edge recombination on the effective lifetime of silicon wafers at low illumination conditions

Abstract

Extremely low surface recombination velocities on crystalline silicon wafers realized by catalytic chemical vapor deposited SiN x / a-Si stacked passivation layers Appl. Phys. Lett. 97, 082108 (2010); 10.1063/1.3483853 Effect of surface passivation on generation and recombination lifetimes in silicon wafer studied by impedance spectroscopy Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 162109 (2010); 10.1063/1.3385779 Spatially resolved modeling of the combined effect of dislocations and grain boundaries on minority carrier lifetime in multicrystalline silicon

Controlling Surface Carrier Density via a PEDOT:PSS Gate: An Application to the Study of Silicon‐Dielectric Interface Recombination

“…Recent reports have found that higher temperature oxidation annihilates in‐grown defects in FZ silicon, providing a stable and higher quality benchmark for surface passivation studies . For the a‐Si and AlO x structures, this can be explained by the plasma damage occurring during film deposition as has also been reported . It is noted that the highest positive bias applied to the AlO x stacks in Figure b was less than for others in Figure .…”

Ion‐Charged Dielectric Nanolayers for Enhanced Surface Passivation in High Efficiency Photovoltaic Devices

“…We dice specimens after oxidation and thus such size will reduce the maximum effective lifetime well below its intrinsic bulk limit due to edge recombination as reported in refs. [26,27]. For the corona-charged and ion-charged specimens, at low injection conditions, τ eff is maximized as surface SRH recombination is minimized through field effect.…”

Understanding the Strong Apparent Injection Dependence of Carrier Lifetimes in Doped Polycrystalline Silicon Passivated Wafers

“…[ 17,18 ] Their presence can be attributed to recombination centres originating from various sources, including: i) deep‐level defects in the silicon bulk, such as the boron–oxygen (B–O) complex, metal impurities, and oxygen precipitate‐related defects; [ 19–21 ] ii) the presence of surface defects or dielectric layers (AlO x and SiN x ) with high fixed charge densities; [ 22–24 ] and iii) edge recombination. [ 22,24,25 ]…”

“…Chen et al [ 25 ] demonstrated that the presence of edge recombination and localized recombination increases the apparent injection dependence of carrier lifetimes in a manner that appears similar to Shockley–Read–Hall recombination. Hameiri et al [ 22 ] through a comprehensive investigation, elucidated the influence of surface damage regions and edge recombination on the injection dependence in both p‐and n ‐type samples, passivated by dielectric films. Their study suggested that the fixed charge associated with the AlO x and SiN x layers contributes to the strong injection dependence of carrier lifetimes of the samples when a surface damage region and edge recombination is present on the samples.…”

“…It is widely recognized that strongly injection-dependent carrier lifetimes can negatively impact solar cell performance (mostly fill factor), particularly at lower illumination intensities (<1 sun). [17,18] Their presence can be attributed to recombination centres originating from various sources, including: i) deeplevel defects in the silicon bulk, such as the boron-oxygen (B-O) complex, metal impurities, and oxygen precipitate-related defects; [19][20][21] ii) the presence of surface defects or dielectric layers (AlO x and SiN x ) with high fixed charge densities; [22][23][24] and iii) edge recombination. [22,24,25] Chen et al [25] demonstrated that the presence of edge recombination and localized recombination increases the apparent injection dependence of carrier lifetimes in a manner that appears similar to Shockley-Read-Hall recombination.…”