Time-resolved photoluminescence for self-calibrated injection-dependent minority carrier lifetime measurements in silicon

Time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) was investigated on passivated silicon wafers under modulated square-wave laser illumination. It is shown that time-correlated single-photon counting can be used to record the transient signals on silicon wafers with doping levels commonly used for photovoltaic applications. This article reports the self calibrated evaluation of the injection-dependent effective minority carrier lifetime from the TRPL measurements. The method only requires knowing the doping level, the incident laser power, the reflection coefficient and the sample thickness. TRPL results were found to be in good agreement with photoconductance lifetime measurements. The effect of the surface recombination velocity on the generation of the PL signal was shown experimentally and discussed with PC1D calculations.