• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.41-46
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• 2013

Efficient and inexpensive solar cells are necessary for photo-voltaic to be widely adopted for mainstream electricity generation. For this to occur, the recombination losses of charge carriers (i.e. electrons or holes) must be minimized using a surface passivation technique suitable for manufacturing. Recently it has been shown that aluminum oxide thin films are negatively charged dielectrics that provide excellent surface passivation of silicon solar cells to attract positive-charged holes. Especially aluminum oxide thin film is a quite suitable passivation on the rear side of p-type silicon solar cells. This paper, it demonstrate the interfacial microstructure and electrical properties of mono-crystalline silicon surface passivated by $Al_2O_3$ films during firing process as applied for screen-printed solar cells. The first task is a comparison of the interfacial microstructure and chemical bonds of PECVD $Al_2O_3$ and of PEALD $Al_2O_3$ films for the surface passivation of silicon. The second is to study electrical properties of double-stacked layers of PEALD $Al_2O_3$/PECVD SiN films after firing process in the temperature range of $650{\sim}950^{\circ}C$.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.565-569
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• 2006

Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition(PECVD) is a well established technique for the deposition of hydrogenated film of silicon nitride (SiNx:H), which is commonly used as an antireflection coating as well as passivating layer in crystalline silicon solar cell. PECVD-SiNx:H films were investigated by varying the deposition and annealing conditions to optimize for the application in silicon solar cells. By varying the gas ratio (ammonia to silane), the silicon nitride films of refractive indices 1.85 - 2.45 were obtained. The film deposited at $450^{\circ}C$ showed the best carrier lifetime through the film deposition rate was not encouraging. The film deposited with the gas ratio of 0.57 showed the best carrier lifetime after annealing at a temperature of $800^{\circ}C$. The single crystalline silicon solar cells fabricated in conventional industrial production line applying the optimized film deposition and annealing conditions on large area substrate of size $125mm{\times}125mm$ (pseudo square) was found to have the conversion efficiencies as high as 17.05 %. Low cost and high efficiency silicon solar cells fabrication sequence has also been explained in this paper.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.57-61
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• 2011

To develop high efficiency crystalline solar cells, the rear surface passivation is very important. In this paper, $Al_2O_3$ films deposited by thermal ALD(atomic layer deposition) method were studied for rear surface passivation of crystalline solar cells and their passivation properties were evaluated. After the deposition of $Al_2O_3$ films on p-type Si wafers, the lifetime was increased very much due to the reduction of interface state density and the field effects of the negative fixed charge in the films. Also, optimum annealing condition and effects of SiNx capping layer were investigated. The best lifetime was obtained when the films were annealed at $400^{\circ}C$ for 15min. And the lifetime degradation of the $Al_2O_3$ films with SiNx capping layers was improved compared to those without the capping layers.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.7-11
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• 2012

SiNx films have been wildly used as anti-reflection coatings and passivation for crystalline silicon solar cells. In this study, the SiNx films were deposited by using high frequency (13.56MHz) PECVD and optical & passivation properties were investigated. The RF power was changed in a certain range for the film deposition. Then, the refractive index, etch rate, minority carrier lifetime and cell efficiency were measured to study the properties of the film respectively. The optimal deposition conditions for application to crystalline silicon solar cells were proposed as results of the study. Finally, the best cell efficiency of 16.98% was obtained from the solar cell with the SiNx films deposited by RF power of 550W.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.149-153
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• 2011

The PC1D is widely used for modeling the properties of crystalline silicon solar cell. Optimized doping profile in crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication is necessary to obtain high conversion efficiency. Doping profile in the forms of a uniform, gaussian, exponential and erfc function can be simulated using the PC1D program. In this paper, the doping profiles including junction depth, dopant concentration on surface and the form of doping profile (gaussian, gaussian+erfc function) were changed to study its effect on electrical properties of solar cell. As decreasing junction depth and doping concentration on surface, electrical properties of solar cell were improved. The characteristics for the solar cells with doping profile using the combination of gaussian and erfc function showed better open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current and conversion efficiency.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.454-455
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• 2009

Selective emitter structure have an important research subject for crystalline silicon solar cells because it is used in production for high efficiency solar cells. A selective emitter structure with highly doped regions underneath the metal contacts is widely known to be one of the most promising high-efficiency solution in solar cell processing. Since most of the selective emitter processes require expensive extra masking and double steps process. Formation of selective emitters is not cost effective. One method that satisfies these requirements is the method of screen-printing with a phosphorus doping paste. In this paper we researched two groups of selective emitter structure process. One was using dopant paste, and the other was using solid source, in order to compare their uniformity, sheet resistance and performance condition time.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.116-120
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• 2011

In this paper, we studied the optimization of the screen pringting method for crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication. The 156 * 156 mm2 p-type silicon wafers with $200{\mu}m$ thickness and $0.5-3{\Omega}cm$ resistivity were used after texturing, doping, and passivation. Screen printing method is a common way to make the c-Si solar cell with low-cost and high-efficiency. We studied the optimized condition for screen printing with crystalline silicon solar cell as changing the printing direction (finger line or bus bar), finger width, and mesh angle. As a result, the screen printing with finger line direction showed higher finger height and better conversion efficiency, compared with one with bus bar direction. The experiments with various finger widths and mesh angles were also carried out. The characteristics of solar cells was obtained by measuring light current-voltage, optical microscope and electroluminescence.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.295-298
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• 2007

Reduction of optical losses in crystalline silicon solar cells by surface modification is one of the most important issues of silicon photovoltaics. Porous Si layers on the front surface of textured Si substrates have been investigated with the aim of improving the optical losses of the solar cells, because an anti-reflection coating(ARC) and a surface passivation can be obtained simultaneously in one process. We have demonstrated the feasibility of a very efficient porous Si ARC layer, prepared by a simple, cost effective, electrochemical etching method. Silicon p-type CZ (100) oriented wafers were textured by anisotropic etching in sodium carbonate solution. Then, the porous Si layers were formed by electrochemical etching in HF solutions. After that, the properties of porous Si in terms of morphology, structure and reflectance are summarized. The structure of porous Si layers was investigated with SEM. The formation of a nanoporous Si layer about 100nm thick on the textured silicon wafer result in a reflectance lower than 5% in the wavelength region from 500 to 900nm. Such a surface modification allows improving the Si solar cell characteristics. An efficiency of 13.4% is achieved on a monocrystalline silicon solar cell using the electrochemical technique.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.109-109
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• 2006

Screen printing (SP) metal contact is typically applied to the solar cells for mass production. However, SP metal contact has low aspect ratio, low accuracy, hard control of the substrate penetration and unclean process. On the other hand, photo lithograpy (PL) metal contact can reduce defects by metal contact. In this investigation, PL metal contact was obtained the multi-layer structure of Ti/Pd/Ag by e-beam process. We applied SP metal contact and PL metal contact to single crystalline silicon solar cells, and demonstrated the difference of conversion efficiency. Because PL metal contact silicon solar cell has Jsc (short circuit current density) better than silicon solar cell applied SP metal contact.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.41-47
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• 2014

Extensive investigation on silicon based thin film reveals a wide range of film characteristics, from low optical gap to high optical gap, from amorphous to micro-crystalline silicon etc. Fabrication of single junction, tandem and triple junction solar cell with suitable materials, indicate that fabrication of solar cell of a relatively moderate efficiency is possible with a better light induced stability. Due to these investigations, various competing materials like wide band gap silicon carbide and silicon oxide, low band gap micro-crystalline silicon and silicon germanium etc were also prepared and applied to the solar cells. Such a multi-junction solar cell can be a technologically promising photo-voltaic device, as the external quantum efficiency of such a cell covers a wider spectral range.