Electrical Characterization and Doping Uniformity Measurement during Crystalline Silicon Solar Cell Fabrication Using Hot Probe Method

The parameters of crystalline semiconductor such as types of semiconductor, uniformity of impurity concentration of doped wafer, majority charge carrier concentration, sheet resistivity of doped wafer surface play an important role in solar cell fabrication process during emitter diffusion, that is the most critical step. In this paper, we have used a low cost in house made hot probe measurement setup. A hot plate was used to heat up the wafer up to 100°C. Two k-type thermocouples were placed simultaneously in contact with the hot and cold surface of the wafer to measure the temperature in situ for both hot and cold probe. We have used two copper probes with a voltmeter connected to measure the potential difference (thermoelectric voltage) between two probes for various temperatures up to 100°C with an interval of 10°C. We have taken measurement for commercial silicon wafer (thickness 200 μm) and one side polished 4 inch diameter Si wafer (thickness 660 μm) to determine the wafer type (n-type or p-type). We also calculated thermopower or Seebeck coefficient from the voltage vs. time curve, that is constant for particular substrate. As a process monitoring tool for solar cell fabrication process, after n-type diffusion using POCl3 on p-type silicon wafer of thickness 200 μm, we have done wafer mapping that gives us the information of doping uniformity over the whole surface of wafer both front and back side