Patent ID: 9103792
Filing Date: 2015-08-11
Classification: G01N,G06T,H01L,H02S,Y02E

Abstract:
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 silicon wafer as a whole 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 predicted operational characteristics of photovoltaic cells manufactured from said silicon wafers, wherein said processing step obtains information that includes the area sum or area average of dislocation densities in each of said plurality of silicon wafers.