Comparison of emitter saturation current densities determined by injection-dependent lifetime spectroscopy in high and low injection regimes

The determination of the emitter saturation current density J0e of symmetrical test structures, analyzed by injection-dependent lifetime spectroscopy (IDLS), in high as well as in low injection regimes is compared. A detailed investigation of the influence of different models for the Auger recombination on the evaluation of the measured minority carrier lifetime is performed. It can be concluded that a good agreement for the extraction of J0e under high and low injection conditions for lightly and highly doped emitters on textured and untextured surfaces was obtained if the Auger parameterization of Kerr et al. is applied. For deep-diffused emitter profiles on textured surfaces a significant increase of J0e well above the geometrical surface area ratio of untextured and textured surfaces of 1.7 was observed. A verification of the experimentally determined values for J0e is performed by numerical device simulations. The simulated surface recombination velocity for the investigated emitter doping profiles is in good agreement to analytical calculations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.