Patent ID: 7045786

Claim:
A non destructive method for characterizing electronic properties of materials, comprising the steps of: (a) irradiating at least one surface of a material with an energy beam output from a modulated or pulsed excitation source wherein a recombination-induced infrared emission is responsively emitted from the material; (b) filtering Planck-mediated thermal emissions from the recombination-induced infrared emission to produce a filtered recombination-induced infrared emission; (c) detecting said filtered recombination-induced infrared emission; and (d) calculating selected electronic properties of the material by one of i) fitting the detected filtered recombination-induced infrared emission to a theoretical model of the photocarrier response of the irradiated material to calculate selected properties of the material, and ii) using suitable calibration charts or tables to extract selected electronic properties of the material by comparison of the detected filtered recombination-induced infrared emission with reference detected filtered recombination-induced infrared emissions from reference materials with known properties.