Determination of the excess carrier lifetime in the collector region of silicon power bipolar transistors

An accurate nondestructive method to determine the excess carrier lifetime in the collector region of silicon n/sup +/-p-v-n/sup +/ power bipolar transistors is presented for the first time. Based on the measurement of the common-emitter collector characteristics and the collector-base junction C-V characteristics of the transistors, this method is also very simple and practical. The calculation results show that the excess carrier lifetime determined using this method is almost the same (with 1% difference) as that determined using the open circuit voltage decay (OCVD) technique with the emitter removed.