Assessment of Influencing Factors on Lifetime-Based Defect Analysis

Since most detection methods are not sensitive enough to detect and characterize recombination active defects in silicon lifetime spectroscopy is an important method in silicon photovoltaics. It is a powerful tool, that can determine the defect parameters Et and k via the analysis of defect parameter solution surfaces. But despite being a crucial method there is no convention for the assessment of uncertainties. This work lines out a possible way to characterize the uncertainty of the method by a simulation of statistical noise onto lifetime curves following the Shockley-Read-Hall-statistics. The uncertainty analysis is done for one exemplary set of defect parameters. It outlines how prone to wrongful parametrization this method can be, if not conducted with great care. Thereby the suggested approach can act as a tool to decrease the uncertainty of the method by understanding, which influences are most crucial to control.