• 한국재료학회지
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• 제20권10호
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• pp.501-507
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• 2010

Changes in surface morphology and roughness of dc sputtered ZnO:Al/Ag back reflectors by varying the deposition temperature and their influence on the performance of flexible silicon thin film solar cells were systematically investigated. By increasing the deposition temperature from $25^{\circ}C$ to $500^{\circ}C$, the grain size of Ag thin films increased from 100 nm to 1000 nm and the grain size distribution became irregular, which resulted in an increment of surface roughness from 6.6 nm to 46.6 nm. Even after the 100 nm thick ZnO:Al film deposition, the surface morphology and roughness of the ZnO:Al/Ag double structured back reflectors were the same as those of the Ag layers, meaning that the ZnO:Al films were deposited conformally on the Ag films without unnecessary changes in the surfacefeatures. The diffused reflectance of the back reflectors improved significantly with the increasing grain size and surface roughness of the Ag films, and in particular, an enhanced diffused reflectance in the long wavelength over 800 nm was observed in the Ag back reflectors deposited at $500^{\circ}C$, which had an irregular grain size distribution of 200-1000 nm and large surface roughness. The improved light scattering properties on the rough ZnO:Al/Ag back reflector surfaces led to an increase of light trapping in the solar cells, and this resulted in a noticeable improvement in the $J_{sc}$ values from 9.94 mA/$cm^2$ for the flat Ag back reflector at $25^{\circ}C$ to 13.36 mA/$cm^2$ for the rough one at $500^{\circ}C$. A conversion efficiency of 7.60% ($V_{oc}$ = 0.93, $J_{sc}$ = 13.36 mA/$cm^2$, FF = 61%) was achieved in the flexible silicon thin film solar cells at this moment.

• 한국전기전자재료학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국전기전자재료학회 2003년도 하계학술대회 논문집 Vol.4 No.2
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• pp.1034-1037
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• 2003

Microcrystalline silicon(c-Si:H) thin-film solar cells are prepared with intrinsic Si-layer by hot wire CVD. The operating parameters of solar cells are strongly affected by the filament temperature ($T_f$) during intrinsic layer. Jsc and efficiency abruptly decreases with elevated $T_f$ to $1400^{\circ}C$. This deterioration of solar cell parameters are resulted from increase of crystalline volume fraction and corresponding defect density at high $T_f$. The heater temperature ($T_h$) are also critical parameter that controls device operations. Solar cells prepared at low $T_h$ ($<200^{\circ}C$) shows a similar operating properties with devices prepared at high $T_f$, i.e. low Jsc, Voc and efficiency. The origins for this result, however, are different with that of inferior device performances at high $T_f$. In addition the phase transition of the silicon films occurs at different silane concentration (SC) by varying filament temperature, by which highest efficiency with SC varies with $T_f$.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 2003년도 하계학술대회 논문집 C
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• pp.1598-1600
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• 2003

Microcrystalline silicon(c-Si:H) thin-film solar cells are prepared with intrinsic Si-layer by hot wire CVD. The operating parameters of solar cells are strongly affected by the filament temperature ($T_f$) during intrinsic layer. Jsc and efficiency abruptly decreases with elevated $T_f$ to $1400^{\circ}C$. This deterioration of solar cell parameters are resulted from increase of crystalline volume fraction and corresponding defect density at high $T_f$ The heater temperature ($T_h$) are also critical parameter that controls device operations. Solar cells prepared at low $T_h$ (<$200^{\circ}C$) shows a similar operating properties with devices prepared at high $T_f$, i.e. low Jsc, Voc and efficiency. The origins for this result, however, are different with that of inferior device performances at high $T_f$. In addition the phase transition of the silicon films occurs at different silane concentration (SC) by varying filament temperature, by which highest efficiency with SC vanes with $T_f$.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.41-47
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• 2024

CIGS solar cells are thin film solar cells that have excellent light absorption coefficient and can be manufactured with high efficiency through the use of low materials. In Korea, they must pass KS certification for home and commercial installation. KS C 8562 is a standard for evaluating the durability of CIGS and thin film amorphous silicon solar modules and deals with contents such as light, temperature, humidity, and mechanical durability. Unlike general crystalline silicon solar modules, the CIGS solar module has a different behavior of output change through these environmental tests, so if it shows 90% or more of the rated output suggested by the manufacturer after the final test, it is judged to be a suitable product. In this paper, the output before and after individual tests was measured through the test method of KS C 8562 to observe the output change and to discover the vulnerabilities of the CIGS solar module when exposed to various environments. Through this, it was confirmed that humidity exposure was the most vulnerable and that it had output recovery characteristics for light (visible light and ultraviolet rays). This study attempted to present the output behavior characteristics and data of the CIGS module at the time when the high efficiency thin film photovoltaic module market is expected to be created in the future.

• 한국재료학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국재료학회 2007년도 추계학술발표대회 및
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• pp.130.1-130.1
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• 2007

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• 제5권4호
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• pp.113-121
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• 2017

The researches on the silicon-based thin films are being actively carried out. The silicon-based thin films can be made as amorphous, microcrystalline and mixed phase and it is known that the optical bandgap can be controlled accordingly. They are suitable materials for the fabrication of single junction, tandem and triple junction solar cells. It can be used as a doping layer through the bonding of boron and phosphorus. The carbon and oxygen can bond with silicon to form a wide range of optical gap. Also, The optical gap of hydrogenated amorphous silicon germanium can be lower than that of silicon. By controlling the optical gaps, it is possible to fabricate multi-junction thin film silicon solar cells with high efficiencies which can be promising photovoltaic devices.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국신재생에너지학회 2006년도 춘계학술대회
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• pp.228-231
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• 2006

This paper briefly introduces silicon based thin film solar cells: amorphous (a-Si:H), microcrystalline ${\mu}c-Si:H$ single junction and $a-Si:H/{\mu}c-Si:H$ tandem solar cells. The major difference of a-Si:H and ${\mu}c-Si:H$ cells comes from electro-optical properties of intrinsic Si-films (active layer) that absorb incident photon and generate electron-hole pairs. The a-Si:H film has energy band-gap (Eg) of 1.7-1.8eV and solar cells incorporating this wide Eg a-Si:H material as active layer commonly give high voltage and low current, when illuminated, compared to ${\mu}c-Si:H$ solar cells that employ low Eg (1.1eV) material. This Eg difference of two materials make possible tandem configuration in order to effectively use incident photon energy. The $a-Si:H/{\mu}c-Si:H$ tandem solar cells, therefore, have a great potential for low cost photovoltaic device by its various advantages such as low material cost by thin-film structure on low cost substrate instead of expensive c-Si wafer and high conversion efficiency by tandem structure. In this paper, the structure, process and operation properties of Si-based thin-film solar cells are discussed.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• 제2권1호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2014

We developed a method of growing thin Si film at $600^{\circ}C$ by hot wire CVD using a very thin large-grained poly-Si seed layer for thin-film Si solar cells. The seed layer was prepared by crystallizing an amorphous Si film by vapor-induced crystallization using $AlCl_3$ vapor. The average grain size of the p-type epitaxial Si layer was about $20{\mu}m$ and crystallographic defects in the epitaxial layer were mainly low-angle grain boundaries and coincident-site lattice boundaries, which are special boundaries with less electrical activity. Moreover, with a decreasing in-situ boron doping time, the mis-orientation angle between grain boundaries and in-grain defects in epitaxial Si decreased. Due to fewer defects, the epitaxial Si film was high quality evidenced from Raman and TEM analysis. The highest mobility of $360cm^2/V{\cdot}s$ was achieved by decreasing the in-situ boron doping time. The performance of our preliminary thin-film solar cells with a single-side HIT structure and $CoSi_2$ back contact was poor. However, the result showed that the epitaxial Si film has considerable potential for improved performance with a reduced boron doping concentration.

• 한국재료학회지
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• 제19권5호
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• pp.245-252
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• 2009

Changes in the surface morphology and light scattering of textured Al doped ZnO thin films on glass substrates prepared by rf magnetron sputtering were investigated. As-deposited ZnO:Al films show a high transmittance of above 80% in the visible range and a low electrical resistivity of $4.5{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$. The surface morphology of textured ZnO:Al films are closely dependent on the deposition parameters of heater temperature, working pressure, and etching time in the etching process. The optimized surface morphology with a crater shape is obtained at a heater temperature of $350^{\circ}C$, working pressure of 0.5 mtorr, and etching time of 45 seconds. The optical properties of light transmittance, haze, and angular distribution function (ADF) are significantly affected by the resulting surface morphologies of textured films. The film surfaces, having uniformly size-distributed craters, represent good light scattering properties of high haze and ADF values. Compared with commercial Asahi U ($SnO_2$:F) substrates, the suitability of textured ZnO:Al films as front electrode material for amorphous silicon thin film solar cells is also estimated with respect to electrical and optical properties.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.69-72
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• 2014

We investigated current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance (C)-V characteristics of solution-processed thin film solar cells, consisting of $Cu(In,Ga)S_2$ and $CuInS_2$ stacked absorber layers. The ideality factors, extracted from the temperature-dependent I-V curves, showed that the tunneling-mediated interface recombination was dominant in the cells. Rapid increase of both series- and shunt-resistance at low temperatures would limit the performance of the cells, requiring further optimization. The C-V data revealed that the carrier concentration of the $CuInS_2$ layer was about 10 times larger than that of the $Cu(In,Ga)S_2$ layer. All these results could help us to find strategies to improve the efficiency of the solution-processed thin film solar cells.