In situ minority carrier lifetime via fast modulated photoluminescence

Mateusz Poplawski; François Silva; Jean-Charles Vanel; Pere Roca i Cabarrocas

doi:10.1051/epjpv/2023010

Special Issue on ‘WCPEC-8: State of the Art and Developments in Photovoltaics’, edited by Alessandra Scognamiglio, Robert Kenny, Shuzi Hayase and Arno Smets

Open Access

EPJ Photovoltaics 14, 19 (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2023010

Regular Article

In situ minority carrier lifetime via fast modulated photoluminescence

Mateusz Poplawski¹^,2^*, François Silva², Jean-Charles Vanel² and Pere Roca i Cabarrocas¹^,2

¹ Institut Photovoltaïque d'Ile-de-France (IPVF), 18 Bvd Thomas Gobert, 91120 Palaiseau, France
² LPICM, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau, France

^* e-mail: mateusz.poplawski@ipvf.fr

Received: 31 July 2022
Received in final form: 22 October 2022
Accepted: 30 January 2023
Published online: 17 May 2023

Abstract

Modulated photoluminescence (MPL) is a powerful technique for determining the effective minority carrier lifetime (τ_eff) of semiconductor materials and devices. MPL is based on the measurement of phase shifts between two sinusoidal waves (minimal amplitude excitation; and PL signal). In particular, in situ τ_eff has been proven to be an effective measurement at showing changes within a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition reactor during fabrication of c-Si solar cells. However, the required time for a single measurement, using the previous method, was 40 s. In this paper a new input signal is proposed, called Dolphin's Wave, providing a method for decreasing the required measurement period to under 2 s, using superposition, frequency sweeps, and wavelets.

Key words: In situ lifetime / modulated photoluminescence / silicon / AlO_x / Lissajous curves

© M. Poplawski et al., Published by EDP Sciences, 2023

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.