Carrier Lifetime Measurements by Microwave Photoconductive Decay Method at Low Injection Levels

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The minority carrier lifetime of Si wafers has been measured at very low injection levels by employing a newly developed microwave photoconductive decay (µ-PCD) technique. It is found that the effective lifetime is dramatically increased for the case of p-type Si when the injection level is reduced to two orders of magnitude less than the equilibrium value. In contrast to this, the n-type wafer lifetime remains almost un-changed even upon lowering the injection level. Also, it is shown that the different contamination levels of Fe in Si wafers are clearly discriminated by the measured lifetime.