2016, Vetter, Michael, Gawlik, Annett, Plentz, Jonathan, Andrä, Gudrun, Ribeyron, Pierre-Jean, Cuevas, Andres, Weeber, Arthur, Ballif, Christophe, Glunz, Stefan, Poortmans, Jef, Brendel, Rolf, Aberle, Armin, Sinton, Ron, Verlinden, Pierre, Hahn, Giso

Liquid-phase crystallized silicon on glass (LPCSG) presents a promising material to fabricate high quality silicon thin films, e.g. for solar cells and modules. Barrier layers and a doped amorphous silicon layer are deposited on the glass substrate followed by crystallization with a line focus laser beam. In this paper we introduce injection level dependent lifetime measurements generated by the quasi steady-state photoconductance decay method (QSSPC) to characterize LPCSG absorbers. This contactless method allows a determination of the LPCSG absorber quality already at an early stage of solar cell fabrication, and provides a monitoring of the absorber quality during the solar cell fabrication steps. We found minority carrier lifetimes higher than 200ns in our layers (e.g. n-type absorber with ND=2x1015cm-3) indicating a surface recombination velocity SBL<3000cm/s at the barrier layer/Si interface.