Evaluations of the intrinsic stress value in silicon wafers from photovoltage measurements

An approach was developed to estimate an intrinsic stress value in silicon from surface photovoltage measurements (SPV). The method is developed by taking into account the stress as a parameter varying the optical absorption spectrum, with the stress value used for proper linearization the of SPV spectrum. The stress value may be obtained as a parameter giving the best fitting of the experimental data to the straight line. The approach may be applied for various types of monocrystalline and multicrystalline silicon samples, both as grown and after various technological treatments.