Open-circuit voltage decay (OCVD) is a method to characterise minority carrier effective lifetime ( ). It is non-destructive, simple and low-cost. It has been mainly used in silicon p-n junctions. is not only a very important parameter to optimise device design but also to supervise process steps. It is not the only parameter we can obtain by OCVD. Due to the intrinsic space charge region capacitance of a p-n junction, the doping level of the lowest-doped region ( ) and built-in potential ( ) are extractable. Moreover, it is also possible to obtain the shunt resistance ( ) value when it has a significant effect on the p-n junction behaviour. The authors first applied the well-established one-diode model in a transient regime to simulate OCVD signal. In a second step, they used an optimisation algorithm to fit the experimental curve of a silicon diode to extract , , and . These values were compared to those obtained from C – V and I – V . Results are promising and demonstrate for the first time, the flexibility of the OCVD method. It opens up the perspective for the development of add-on features of the method and for measuring short lifetime.

中文翻译：

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开路电压衰减：转向灵活的表征方法

开路电压衰减（OCVD）是表征少数载流子有效寿命（ ）。它是非破坏性的，简单且低成本的。它已主要用于硅pn结。不仅是优化设备设计的重要参数，而且也是监督工艺步骤的重要参数。这不是我们可以通过OCVD获得的唯一参数。由于pn结的本征空间电荷区电容，最低掺杂区的掺杂水平（ ）和内置电位（ ）是可提取的。此外，还可以获得分流电阻（ ）值对pn结行为有重大影响时。作者首先在瞬态中应用了公认的一二极管模型来模拟OCVD信号。第二步，他们使用优化算法拟合硅二极管的实验曲线以提取 ， ， 和 。将这些值与从C – V 和 一世 – V 。结果令人鼓舞，并首次证明了OCVD方法的灵活性。它为开发该方法的附加功能和测量较短的使用寿命开辟了前景。