Photoluminescence spectroscopy is a widely used technique for characterisation of the optical and electronic properties of semiconductors and molecules. The technique itself is fast, contactless, and nondestructive. Therefore, it can be used to study the optoelectronic properties of materials of various sizes (from microns to centimeters) during the fabrication process without complex sample preparation. For example, photoluminescence measurements of solar cell absorbers can predict the maximum voltage the material could produce. In chemistry, the method is more often referred to as fluorescence spectroscopy, but the instrumentation is the same. The relaxation processes can be studied using time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy to find the decay lifetime of the photoluminescence. These techniques can be combined with microscopy, to map the intensity (confocal microscopy) or the lifetime (fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy) of the photoluminescence across a sample (e.g. a semiconducting wafer, or a biological sample that has been marked with fluorescent molecules). Modulated photoluminescence is a specific method for measuring the complex frequency response of the photoluminescence signal to a sinusoidal excitation, allowing for the direct extraction of minority carrier lifetime without the need for intensity calibrations. It has been used to study the influence of interface defects on the recombination of excess carriers in crystalline silicon wafers with different passivation schemes.