Excercises

1.) Selective etching is often used to assess the dislocation density in silicon via EPD. It can also
be used to investigate the density of silicon oxide precipitates. An important difference is
that the precipitates are small and thus not continuous through the sample.
What information does the EPD (in pits/area) provide in this case?
Design an etching experiment to determine a volume density.

2.) Many metals cause recombination when they contaminate the silicon crystal. This
recombination strongly affects the efficiency potential of solar cells made from contaminated
silicon.
Imagine very pure silicon that is contaminated with just one metal species. What is the basic
mathematical relation between the concentration of the metal [Me] and the effective charge
carrier lifetime τeff of silicon?
What are the central physical parameters of the defect created by the impurity that
determine how much recombination it introduces?
The above relation will potentially describe τeff for a vast range of [Me] but not for extremely
small and extremely large concentrations. Can you think of reasons why this is the case?

(hint: read up on Shockley-Read-Hall recombination and/or lifetime spectroscopy)

3.) Based on the considerations from 2.) we can use lifetime measurements taken on samples to
assess their purity e.g. by comparing a “dirty” sample to a very pure one.
What are important aspects of the samples to make comparing lifetime measurements
sensible?
When considering the two measurement methods from the lecture (QSSPC & µW-PCD), do
you have an idea which method would give more reliable information for the comparison?

Example exam questions:

A) 29. PL Imaging is a very powerful tool to obtain spatially resolved maps of local voltage.
The relation between PL intensity and voltage is…
true false
  linear.
  exponential.
  logarithmic.
  a polynom.
(this would be worth ~4 of 100 points)
B) Name the two depicted defects.

(this would be worth ~4/100 points)