• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2013

In this study, the influence on the surface passivation properties of crystalline silicon according to silicon wafer thickness, and the correlation with a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cell performances were investigated. The wafers passivated by p(n)-doped a-Si:H layers show poor passivation properties because of the doping elements, such as boron(B) and phosphorous(P), which result in a low minority carrier lifetime (MCLT). A decrease in open circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$) was observed when the wafer thickness was thinned from $170{\mu}m$ to $50{\mu}m$. On the other hand, wafers incorporating intrinsic (i) a-Si:H as a passivation layer showed high quality passivation of a-Si:H/c-Si. The implied $V_{oc}$ of the ITO/p a-Si:H/i a-Si:H/n c-Si wafer/i a-Si:H/n a-Si:H/ITO stacked layers was 0.715 V for $50{\mu}m$ c-Si substrate, and 0.704 V for $170{\mu}m$ c-Si. The $V_{oc}$ in the heterojunction solar cells increased with decreases in the substrate thickness. The high quality passivation property on the c-Si led to an increasing of $V_{oc}$ in the thinner wafer. Short circuit current decreased as the substrate became thinner because of the low optical absorption for long wavelength light. In this paper, we show that high quality passivation of c-Si plays a role in heterojunction solar cells and is important in the development of thinner wafer technology.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.73-78
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• 2008

We investigated for comparison of large-area i-a-Si:H and p-a-SiC:H film quality like thickness uniformity, optical bandgap and surface roughness using both ICP-CVD and PECVD on the large-area substrate(diameter of 100 mm). As a whole, films using ICP-CVD could be achieved much uniform thickness and bandgap of that using PECVD. For i-a-Si:H films, its uniformity of thickness and optical bandgap were 2.8 % and 0.38 %, respectively. Also, thickness and optical bandgap of p-a-SiC:H films using ICP-CVD could be obtained at 1.8 % and 0.3 %, respectively. In case of surface roughness, average surface roughness (below 5 nm) of ICP-CVD film could be much better than that (below 30 nm) of PECVD film. HIT solar cell with 2 wt%-AZO/p-a-SiC:H/i-a-Si:H/c-Si/Ag structure was fabricated and characterized with diameter of 152.3 mm in this large-area ICP-CVD system. Conversion efficiency of 9.123 % was achieved with a practical area of $100\;mm\;{\times}\;100\;mm$, which can show the potential to fabrication of the large-area solar cell using ICP-CVD method.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.683-687
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• 1997

The purpose of this work is to develop a highly reliable solar cell based on the diamond-like carbon(DLC)/silicon heterojunction. Thin films of DLC have been deposited by employing both filtered cathodic vacuum arc(FCVA) and magnetron plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition(m-PECVD) systems. Structural, electrical, and optical properties of DLC films deposited are systematically analyzed as a function of deposition conditions, such as magnetic field, substrate bias voltage, gas pressure, and nitrogen content. The I-V measurement has been used to elucidate the mechanism responsible for the conduction process in the DLC/Si junction. Photoresponse characteristics of the junction are measured and its reliability against temperature and light stresses is also analyzed.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.168-168
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• 2009

고효율 실리콘 이종접합 태양전지 제작을 위한 요소기술 중 a-Si:H/c-Si 간의 계면 안정화는 태양전지 효율에 중요한 역할을 한다. 본 연구에서는 n-type 결정질 실리콘 기판을 사용하여, 소수전하들의 재결합을 방지하고, 계면 안정화를 실행하는 방안으로 실리콘 기판 습식 세정을 수행하였다. 반도체 공정에서 일반적으로 알려진 RCA 세정기법에 HF 세정을 마지막공정으로 추가하여 자연 산화막과 기타 불순물을 더욱 효과적으로 제거할 수 있도록 실험을 진행하였다. 마지막 공정으로 추가된 HF 세정에 의한 a-Si:H/c-Si 계면 안정화 효과를 관찰하기 위하여 HF농도와 HF 세정시간에 따른 소수반송자 수명을 측정하였다. 또한 HF 세정 이후 공정의 영향을 확인하기 위하여 PE-CVD법으로 a-Si:H 박막 증착 이전 실리콘 기판의 온도와 상온에서 머무는 시간에 따른 a-Si:H/c-Si 계면안정화 특성을 분석하였다. 본 실험을 통해 HF세정공정이 계면특성에 미치는 영향을 확인하였으며 실리콘 기판 습식 세정이 이종접합태양전지 특성에 미치는 영향을 분석하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.295-295
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• 2016

Recently, TCO films with low carrier concentration, high mobility and high work function are proposed beneficial as front electrode in HIT solar cell due to free-carrier absorption in NIR wavelength region and low Schottky barrier height in the front TCO/a-Si:H(p) interface. We report high transmittance and work function zirconium-doped indium tin oxide (ITO:Zr) films with various plasma (Ar/O2 and Ar) conditions. The role of (Ar/O2) plasma was to enhance the work function of the ITO:Zr films whereas the pure Ar plasma based ITO:Zr showed good electrical properties. The RF magnetron sputtered ITO:Zr films with low resistivity and high transmittance were employed as front electrode in HIT solar cells, yield the best performance of 18.15% with an open-circuit voltage of 710 eV and current density of 34.63 mA/cm2. The high work function ITO:Zr films can be used to modify the front barrier height of HIT solar cell.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.351.2-351.2
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• 2014

Indium tin oxide (ITO) has a lot of variations of its properties because it is basically in an amorphous state. Therefore, the differences in composition ratio of ITO can result in alteration of electrical properties. Normally, ITO is considered as transparent conductive oxide (TCO), possessing excellent properties for the optical and electrical devices. Quantitatively, TCO has transparency over 80 percent within the range of 380nm to 780nm, which is visible light although its specific resistance is less than $10-3{\Omega}/cm$. Thus, the solar cell is the best example for which ITO has perfectly matching profile. In addition, when ITO is used as transparent conductive electrode, this material essentially has to have a proper work function with contact materials. For instance, heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT) solar cell could have both front ITO and backside ITO. Because each side of ITO films has different type of contact materials, p-type amorphous silicon and n-type amorphous silicon, work function of ITO has to be modified to transport carrier with low built-in potential and Schottky barrier, and approximately requires variation from 3 eV to 5 eV. In this study, we examine the change of work function for different sputtering conditions using ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS). Structure of ITO films was investigated by spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Optical transmittance of the films was evaluated by using an ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometer

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.6-11
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• 2020

The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of a two-terminal tandem solar cell depends upon the tunnel-recombination junction (TRJ) between the top and bottom sub-cells. An optimized TRJ in a tandem cell helps improve its open-circuit voltage (V_oc), short-circuit current density (J_sc), fill factor (FF), and efficiency (PCE). One of the parameters that affect the TRJ is the buffer layer thickness. Therefore, we investigated various TRJs by varying the thickness of the buffer or intermediate layer (TRJ-buffer) in between the highly doped p-type and n-type layers of the TRJ. The TRJ-buffer layer was p-type nc-Si:H, with a doping of 0.06%, an activation energy (E_a) of 43 meV, an optical gap (E_g) of 2.04 eV, and its thickness was varied from 0 nm to 125 nm. The tandem solar cells we investigated were a combination of a heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT) bottom sub-cell and an a-Si:H (amorphous silicon) top sub-cell. The initial cell efficiency without the TRJ buffer was 7.65% while with an optimized buffer layer, its efficiency improved to 11.74%, i.e., an improvement in efficiency by a factor of 1.53.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.314-314
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• 2016

In this paper, the effects of carrier concentration on dielectric constant of ITO films were investigated by spectroscopic ellipsometry. From SE results, we find the pronounced shift of the ${\varepsilon}1$ peaks toward high energy with concentration; while contrarily, the ${\varepsilon}2$ values at low energy region increases with decreasing concentration. These shifts are attributed to the Burstein-Moss and free-carrier absorption effects within ITO films. With increases carrier concentration, the values of extinction coefficients show quite different behaviors in range of wavelength from 200 to 1200 nm. The reduction in k at ${\lambda}{\leq}500nm$, while increasing at ${\lambda}{\geq}500nm$ was observed. The QE of HJ solar cells behaviors can be roughly classified into two regions: short-wavelengths (${\leq}650nm$) and long-wavelengths region (${\geq}650nm$). With increasing carrier concentration as well as energy band gap, QE shows improvement at short-wavelength, while at long-wavelength QE shows opposite trend. Widening band gap energy due to Burstein-Moss shift is the key to improve QE in short-wavelength; simultaneously FCA effect due to optical scattering is attributed to the reduction in QE at long-wavelength. In spite of band gap extension, Jsc calculated from QE decreases from 34.7 mA/cm2 to 33.2 mA/cm2 with increasing carrier concentration. It demonstrated that FCA effect may more govern Jsc in the HJ solar cells.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.113-116
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• 2005

In this paper, silicon thin-film solar cells(Si- TFSC) and a-Si/c-Si heterojunction solar cells(HJ-cell) are investigated. The Si-TFSC was prepared on glass substrate by depositing $1-3{\mu}m$ thin-film silicons by glow discharge method. The $a-Si:H/{\mu}c-Si:H$ tandem solar cells on textured ZnO:A1 TCO (transparent conducting oxide) showed improved Jsc in top and bottom cells than that on $SnO_2:F$ TCO. This enhancement of jsc resulted from improved light trapping effect by front textured ZnO:A1. The a-Si/c-Si HJ-cells with simple structure without high efficiency features are suffering from low Voc and Jsc. The improvement of front nip and back interface properties by adopting high quality silicon-films at low temperature should be done both for increasing device performances and production cost.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.210-216
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• 2010

This paper investigates the dependence of a-Si:H/c-Si passivation and heterojunction solar cell performances on various cleaning processes of silicon wafers. It is observed that the passivation quality of a-Si:H thin-films on c-Si wafers depends highly on the initial H-termination properties of the wafer surface. The effective minority carrier lifetime (MCLT) of highly H-terminated wafer is beneficial for obtaining high quality passivation of a-Si:H/c-Si. The wafers passivated by p(n)-doped a-Si:H layers have low MCLT regardless of the initial H-termination quality. On the other hand, the MCLT of wafers incorporating intrinsic (i) a-Si:H as a passivation layer shows sensitive variation with initial cleaning and H-termination schemes. By applying the improved cleaning processes, we can obtain an MCLT of $100{\mu}sec$ after H-termination and above $600{\mu}sec$ after i a-Si:H thin film deposition. By adapting improved cleaning processes and by improving passivation and doped layers, we can fabricate a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cells with an active area conversion efficiency of 18.42%, which cells have an open circuit voltage of 0.670V, short circuit current of $37.31\;mA/cm^2$ and fill factor of 0.7374. These cells show more than 20% pseudo efficiency measured by Suns-$V_{oc}$ with an elimination of series resistance.