Extraction of the minority carrier recombination lifetime from forward diode characteristics

Abstract

A simple procedure is proposed to calculate the minority carrier recombination lifetime from forward diode I/V characteristics. By using diodes with strongly different perimeter to area ratio and by taking into account the diode ideality, more accurate lifetime values are obtained. The thus obtained values are in excellent agreement with the ones obtained from microwave absorption measurements of photoconductive decay as is illustrated on Czochralski substrates with different oxygen densities and pretreatments.