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Iron concentration determination

The exact determination of the iron concentration is very important, since iron is one of the most abundant and also most detrimental defects in silicon. Hence it is necessary to measure the iron concentration as exactly and fast as possible, with a very high resolution and preferably inline.

With the MDPingot and MDPmap series it is possible to measure the iron concentration in bricks and wafers fully automated and with a very high resolution.

Lifetime measurements before and after iron boron pair dissociation is a widely used method for iron determination in silicon wafers.

In boron doped silicon with a high doping concentration, as it is used for PV applications nearly 100 % of the electrical active iron is present as FeB pairs. With light of sufficient energy these pairs can be dissociated in Fei and B. This process is reversible and after some time all FeB pairs are associated again. FeB and Fei have different recombination properties, so that the dissociation has an effect on the measured lifetime. With this effect the iron concentration can be determined via:

For the iron determination a calibration factor C is used, which depends on the injection, doping concentration and trap concentration, which has to be considered especially in Multicrystalline silicon. With MDP a determination of the iron concentration is possible for mc- and mono-Si with a high resolution and thanks to simulations and years of research, also with a high accuracy.

  • Lifetime map before illumination and resulting iron map

For more information about the iron determination and the dependencies of the calibration factor read:

[1] S. Rein and S. W. Glunz, Journal of Applied Physics 98 (2005).

[2] N.Schüler, T.Hahn, K. Dornich, J.R. Niklas, Solid State phenomena to be published

Tools for Iron concentration determination

MDPmap

Mono- and Multi-crystalline wafer lifetime measurement device

MDPpro

Mono- and Multi-crystalline wafer and brick lifetime measurement device

MDPspot

Low cost table top lifetime measurement system for characterization of a variety of different silicon samples at different preparation stages, without built-in automatization. Optional hand operated z-axis for thicker samples up to 156 mm bricks....

MDPpro850+

for production and quality control of monocrystalline Si ingots,bricks and wafers

MPD series / µPCD

µPCD/MDP (QSS)

PID series

PID

XRD series / X-ray diffraction

X-ray diffraction

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