Formation kinetics of copper-related light-induced degradation in crystalline silicon

Light-induced degradation (LID) is a deleterious effect in crystalline silicon, which is considered to originate from recombination-active boron-oxygen complexes and/or copper-related defects. Although LID in both cases appears as a fast initial decay followed by a second slower degradation, we show that the time constant of copper-related degradation increases with increasing boron concentration in contrast to boron-oxygen LID. Temperature-dependent analysis reveals that the defect formation is limited by copper diffusion. Finally, interface defect density measurements confirm that copper-related LID is dominated by recombination in the wafer bulk.