Oxygen precipitate studies in silicon for gettering in solar cell applications

Oxygen precipitates in silicon can be used (in a process called internal gettering) as sites of heterogeneous nucleation of precipitates of iron and other transition metal that are harmful to solar cell device operation. Oxygen precipitate densities in p- (10¹⁴ boron atoms/cm³) wafers were quantified using chemical etch techniques. The precipitate densities were then used to estimate times to getter iron based on a diffusion limited precipitation model. Oxygen precipitate densities in p++ (10¹⁹ boron atoms/cm³) wafers were quantified using chemical etch techniques. High levels of boron in p++ wafers make quantifying precipitate densities particularly difficult, via etching, or other methods because precipitate densities in highly doped wafers are very high and the size of precipitates small.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2001

Author dc:creator

• Salomon, Ashley

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lionel C. Kimerling.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114090

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/114090