THZ Microprobe System for Contact-Free High-Resolution Sheet-Resistance Imaging

Recently, the demand for non-destructive contact-free measurement tools which are able to measure conductivity distributions independent of surface morphology at spatial resolutions down to a few micrometres has strongly increased. This demand is caused by an increased application of micron-scale doping areas in solar cells (e.g. selective emitter structures or interdigitated back-contact (IBC) cells) and further semiconductor applications. In this work a recently introduced method based on the photoconductive (PC) near-field detection of terahertz (THz) light transmission is introduced for sheet resistance imaging on rough laser-doped multi-crystalline (mc) silicon samples featuring doping microstructures. Furthermore spatially resolved sheet resistance measurements on the backside of IBC solar cells and test structures will be presented. THz and comparative 4-point-probe (4pp) measurements will be presented giving evidence that the terahertz microprobe-based approach can effectively fill the yet present gap of high-resolution contact-free conductivity measurement tools applicable to wafer-scale samples with rough or laserprocessed surfaces.