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Effect of Cooling Rate during Thermal Processes on the Electrical Properties of Cast Multi-Crystalline Silicon

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Abstract

Photoluminescence (PL) imaging techniques and the minority carrier lifetime test system were employed to investigate the variation of the interstitial iron (Fei) concentration, the recombination activity of structural defects and the minority carrier lifetime of cast multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) in response to the cooling rate after heating. The results showed that when the mc-Si wafers are heated to high-temperature (1000 °C) and then cooled to ambient temperature with different cooling rate, the Fei concentration, the number of recombination active dislocations and grain boundaries increased as the cooling rate rises while the minority carrier lifetime decreased. If cast mc-Si is heated followed by faster cooling at 30 °C/s, the Fei concentration increase by 223% and the electrical activity of grain boundaries, dislocations and intragrain increase significantly, that is to say, the whole wafer is heavily contaminated with metal impurities, and present extremely low minority carrier lifetime.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51861023 and 52062035) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (Grant No. 20181BAB206010) and the Science and Technology Research Project of Jiangxi Education Department (Grant No. 14110).

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51861023 and 52062035) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (Grant No. 20181BAB206010) and the Science and Technology Research Project of Jiangxi Education Department (Grant No. 14110).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, People’s Republic of China

    Panbing Zhou, Shilong Liu, Naigen Zhou & Xiuqin Wei

  2. Institute of Photovoltaics, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, People’s Republic of China

    Lang Zhou

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  1. Panbing Zhou
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  2. Shilong Liu
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  4. Xiuqin Wei
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Contributions

All the authors contributed to the manuscript. Panbing Zhou: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - Original Draft, Validation. Naigen Zhou: Writing - Reviewing and Editing, Formal analysis, Data curation. Shilong Liu: Investigation, Validation. Xiuqin Wei: Writing - Reviewing and Editing. Lang Zhou: Resources, Supervision, Project administration.

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Correspondence to Panbing Zhou or Naigen Zhou.

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Zhou, P., Liu, S., Zhou, N. et al. Effect of Cooling Rate during Thermal Processes on the Electrical Properties of Cast Multi-Crystalline Silicon. Silicon 14, 7793–7798 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-021-01499-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-021-01499-1

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