The impact of wafering on organic and inorganic surface contaminations

[Display omitted] •A rapid and sensitive method for the measurement of organic impurities on wafer surfaces was developed.•A sub-optimal wafering process may introduce more than 4-fold of organic impurities.•The usefulness of trace element analysis on wafer surfaces is demonstrated.•A significant reduction of metal contaminations was found on wafers after alkaline pre-cleaning.•The implementation of organic and inorganic surface analysis into the manufacturing process is recommended. Beside the silicon feedstock material, the crystallization process and the cell processing itself, the wafer sawing process can strongly determine the final solar cell quality. Especially surface contamination is introduced in this process step because impurities from sawing meet with a virgin silicon surface which is highly reactive until the oxide layer is formed. In this paper we quantitatively analysed both, the organic and inorganic contamination on wafer surfaces and show that changes of process parameters during wafering may cause dramatic changes in surface purity. We present powerful techniques for the monitoring of wafer surface quality which is essential for the production of high efficiency and high quality solar cells.