Characterization of silicon surface states at clean and copper contaminated condition via transient capacitance measurement

Abstract

Silicon surface is one of the dominant recombination sites for silicon solar cells. Generally, the recombination ability of silicon surface is characterized in terms of surface recombination velocity. However, silicon surface actually contain a series of donor and acceptor levels across the silicon band gap, and therefore the surface recombination velocity is too general to provide detailed information of the silicon surface states. In this paper, we used the measured transient capacitance data to extract the detailed information (like defect energy levels, defect densities, and capture cross sections) of the silicon surface states. Furthermore, the influence of copper contamination on silicon surface states was examined, and it was found that copper contamination can change the localized energy levels of “clean” silicon surface states to the band-like energy levels, meanwhile the defect densities and capture cross sections were both enlarged.