Quality evaluation of diamond wire-sawn gallium-doped silicon wafers

Most of the world's solar cells in photovoltaic industry are currently fabricated using crystalline silicon. Czochralski-grown silicon crystals are more expensive than multicrystalline silicon crystals. The future of solar-grade Czochralski-grown silicon crystals crucially depends on whether it is usable for the mass-production of high-efficiency solar cells or not. It is generally believed that the main obstacle for making solar-grade Czochralski-grown silicon crystals a perfect high-efficiency solar cell material is presently light-induced degradation problem. In this work, the substitution of boron with gallium in p-type silicon single crystal is studied as an alternative to reduce the extent of lifetime degradation. The diamond-wire sawing technology is employed to slice the silicon ingot. In this paper, the quality of the diamond wire-sawn gallium-doped silicon wafers is studied from the chemical, electrical and structural points of view. It is found that the characteristic of gallium-doped silicon wafers including texturing behavior and surface metallic impurities are same as that of conventional boron-doped Czochralski crystals.