Carrier recombination in silicon materials used for photovoltaic devices

Recombination and transport parameters are critical to assessing photovoltaic parameters and predicting device performance. Here, I measured a group of silicon wafers of various origins, doping levels and mechanical structure, to demonstrate the range of phenomena that occur in photovoltaic materials. These various wafers had been the subject of a previous round-robin lifetime evaluation. These measurements demonstrate the difficulty and complexity of finding the true recombination rate when the material is incorporated into an operating device. The conclusion also supports the notion that characterizing a defect-dominated semiconductor with a single lifetime number is often inadequate.