Comparison of photoluminescence imaging on starting multi-crystalline silicon wafers to finished cell performance

Photoluminescence (PL) imaging techniques can be applied to multicrystalline silicon wafers throughout the manufacturing process. Both band-to-band PL and defect-band emissions, which are longer-wavelength emissions from sub-bandgap transitions, are used to characterize wafer quality and defect content on starting multicrystalline silicon wafers and neighboring wafers processed at each step through completion of finished cells. Both PL imaging techniques spatially highlight defect regions that represent dislocations and defect clusters. The relative intensities of these imaged defect regions change with processing. Band-to-band PL on wafers in the later steps of processing shows good correlation to cell quality and performance. The defect band images show regions that change relative intensity through processing, and better correlation to cell efficiency and reverse-bias breakdown is more evident at the starting wafer stage as opposed to later process steps. We show that thermal processing in the 200°-400°C range causes impurities to diffuse to different defect regions, changing their relative defect band emissions.