Effect of compensation and of metallic impurities on the electrical properties of Cz-grown solar grade silicon

In this work we present a study of a p-type Czochralski-grown Si ingot which was grown using 10% solar grade silicon (SoG-Si). As the SoG-Si contains a relatively high concentration of impurities including phosphorus, the electrical properties of the as-grown wafers from this ingot are affected by both the compensating dopants and other impurities. Measurements of the minority charge carrier lifetime in the as-grown material reveal very low values (4–8us). The Hall mobilities at room temperature correspond to normal values for Czochralski silicon in the upper part of the ingot (which solidifies first) and decrease significantly toward the bottom of the ingot. Segregation leads to an accumulation of impurities toward the lower parts of the ingot as well as to a stronger increase in phosphorus than of boron, the latter of which results in a high compensation level (i.e., an increasing resistivity). A priori, both effects could be responsible for the degradation of the electrical properties in the lower parts of the ingot, whereas theoretical considerations show that the level of compensation should not cause a strong decrease in Hall mobility at room temperature. Untextured solar cells have been processed from wafers originating from different positions of the ingot. As expected, the phosphorus diffusion leads to a gettering effect: the recombination active impurities are removed out of the wafer volume. This results in relatively high efficiencies (>16%) of the solar cells but does not show a strong correlation between ingot height and cell efficiency. This observation is also confirmed by the high bulk lifetimes (>200us) measured after the process even for samples originating from the last solidified lower part of the ingot. The Hall mobility of samples cut from finished solar cells has been measured and shows the same trend as the as-grown samples, the values for the bottom of the ingot still being very low. With the concentrations of boron and phosphorus studied up to this point, compensation showed no detrimental effect on the cell efficiency of industrial-like solar cells.