Determination of the life time of excess carriers in silicon with photoacoustic and photocurrent methods

Abstract

This paper presents results of both theoretical and experimental studies of the characteristics – phase differences of the photoacoustic (PA) signals versus the frequency of modulation and for the purpose of comparison of characteristics – phase of the photocurrent (PC) signal versus the frequency of modulation. If the life time of excess carriers is the main goal of investigations the PC rather than the PA method should be applied wherever it is possible. The paper shows what advantages and disadvantages of both methods are from the point of view of determination of the life time of excess carriers. Finally the paper presents comparison of the phase PA and PC characteristics and life times extracted from both experiments for the series of silicon samples.