Investigation of lifetime degradation of RIE-processed silicon samples for solar cells

Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) is observed to cause substantial effective carrier lifetime degradation in silicon wafers. Degradation of lifetime is permanent for samples where RIE etches into silicon, while the lifetime degradation is temporary for samples where RIE etches only dielectric layers of SiO₂ grown on the wafer. The degradation of the effective lifetime of RIE-etched silicon samples can be minimized by exposing only a few percent of the wafer to the etch.