Dissolution of Oxygen Precipitate Nuclei in n-Type CZ-Si Wafers to Improve Their Material Quality: Experimental Results

We present experimental results which show that oxygen-related precipitate nuclei (OPN) present in p-doped, n-type, Czochralski wafers can be dissolved using a flash-annealing process, yielding very high quality wafers for high-efficiency solar cells. Flash annealing consists of heating a wafer in an optical furnace to temperature between 1150 and 1250 °C for a short time. This process produces a ...