μXRF investigations on the influence of solar cell processing steps on iron and copper precipitates in multicrystalline silicon

The material quality of multicrystalline silicon is influenced by crystal defects and contaminations like transition metal precipitates. During solar processing these defects can be restructured and change their electrical activity. The purpose of this work is to study the impact of different solar cell processing steps on the distribution and electric activity of transition metal precipitates like iron and copper. Therefore, neighbouring wafers of a multicrystalline silicon ingot, intentionally contaminated with iron and copper were investigated by μXRF (X-Ray Fluorescence Microscopy) at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, to determine the distribution of transition metal precipitates. Afterwards, several solar cell processing steps were applied to these samples. The same sample areas were measured by μXRF again to determine the influence of the applied processing steps on the observed transition metal precipitates. Therefore, a different behaviour of iron and copper precipitates could be observed as expected, due to their different dissolution and diffusion coefficients in silicon. Additionally, the same processing steps were applied to a second set of samples to evaluate the effect of processing steps on the minority charge carrier lifetime and the recombination activity of grain boundaries.