Effects of phosphorus diffusion gettering on minority carrier lifetimes of single-crystalline, multi-crystalline and UMG silicon wafer

Phosphorus diffusion gettering, which can effectively reduce the transition-metal impurities in the bulk of Si wafer and enhance the minority carrier lifetime (MCLT), is a well-known process to improve the performances of solar cells. Especially, the appropriate gettering process is further required for manufacturing solar cells using an upgraded metallurgical-grade silicon (UMG Si) wafer. In this work, an improvement in the MCLT of the UMG Si wafer including the single-crystalline and multi-crystalline Si wafer after phosphorus diffusion gettering was confirmed by using the quasi-steady state photo-conductivity (QSSPC) measurement and the microwave photo-conductance decay (μW-PCD) method. The experimental results were compared with the MCLT variations calculated through the simulation of the Fe distributions in the Si wafers. It was also observed that the efficiency of the UMG Si solar cell increased by 0.53% due to the two-step gettering process.