Quasi-steady-state photoconductance measurements on crystalline silicon thin-film material

In this contribution, a method to determine the excess carrier lifetime epi in the electrically active epitaxial layer of crystalline silicon thin-film material is presented. The concept is based on the determination of the emitter saturation current density J0e by means of quasi-steady-state photoconductance measurements of thin-film lifetime samples with different epitaxial layer thicknesses. An increasing J0e with increasing epitaxial layer thickness is expected. In principle, also quantitative results regarding epi can be made. First measurements on microelectronicgrade and solar-grade crystalline thin-film material are presented in this work.