Defects in Multicrystalline Si Wafers Studied by Spectral Photoluminescence Imaging, Combined with EBSD and Dislocation Mapping

Defect related sub-band gap luminescence emissions due to Shockley-Read-Hall recombination in mc-Si wafers have been investigated with spectral photoluminescence imaging, combined with electron backscatter diffraction and dislocation mapping, for p- and n-type wafers, with and without intentionally introduced Fe. The well-known emission with energy 0.807 eV (D1) is found to be correlated with heavily dislocated areas of the wafers with emissions emanating from the immediate vicinity of the defects. A less studied emission with energy centered around 0.7 eV (D07) may be the product of two emissions and is found to exhibit very different characteristics in a boron-doped wafer intentionally contaminated with Fe than in the other samples. There is reason to believe that a radiative recombination pathway with characteristic photons with energy 0.694 eV is present in this sample due to interstitial iron, Fei, while the D3/D4 (0.938 eV/1.00 eV) emission pair is related to the FeB complex.