Reassessment of Minority Carrier Traps in Silicon during “QuasiSteady-State”Photoconductance Measurements

Abstract

Most previous studies regarding the trapping effect in quasi-steady-state photoconductance measurements assume that traps are measured in a steady-state regime. In this contribution, we demonstrate that even under conventional quasi-steady-state measurement conditions, the traps can be in a transient regime. Thus, previous analyses may have led to a misinterpretation of the trap properties. This study highlights the difference between steady-state and transient regimes of the trapping effect and focuses on the analysis of traps in the transient regime. Additionally, a method to extract the trap parameters from transient photoconductance is proposed and applied to data from n -type Czochralski silicon.