Patent ID: 9546955
Date: 2017-01-17
CPC Classifications: G01N,G06T,H01L,H02S,Y02E

Claim:
1. A method of classifying a plurality of silicon wafers for photovoltaic cell manufacture, said method comprising the steps of: (a) capturing a photoluminescence image of a whole silicon wafer of each of said plurality of silicon wafers for photovoltaic cell manufacture; (b) processing each of said images to obtain information about defects in each of said plurality of silicon wafers; (c) utilizing said information about defects obtained from said photoluminescence image of a whole silicon wafer to apply a classification to said whole silicon wafer for each of said plurality of silicon wafers; and (d) using said classification to bin each of said silicon wafers into different quality categories based on likely operational characteristics of photovoltaic cells manufactured from said silicon wafers.