• Title/Summary/Keyword: solar plasma

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Silicon Nitride Layer Deposited at Low Temperature for Multicrystalline Solar Cell Application

  • Karunagaran, B.;Yoo, J.S.;Kim, D.Y.;Kim, Kyung-Hae;Dhungel, S.K.;Mangalaraj, D.;Yi, Jun-Sin
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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    • 2004.11a
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    • pp.276-279
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    • 2004
  • Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) of silicon nitride (SiN) is a proven technique for obtaining layers that meet the needs of surface passivation and anti-reflection coating. In addition, the deposition process appears to provoke bulk passivation as well due to diffusion of atomic hydrogen. This bulk passivation is an important advantage of PECVD deposition when compared to the conventional CVD techniques. A further advantage of PECVD is that the process takes place at a relatively low temperature of 300t, keeping the total thermal budget of the cell processing to a minimum. In this work SiN deposition was performed using a horizontal PECVD reactor system consisting of a long horizontal quartz tube that was radiantly heated. Special and long rectangular graphite plates served as both the electrodes to establish the plasma and holders of the wafers. The electrode configuration was designed to provide a uniform plasma environment for each wafer and to ensure the film uniformity. These horizontally oriented graphite electrodes were stacked parallel to one another, side by side, with alternating plates serving as power and ground electrodes for the RF power supply. The plasma was formed in the space between each pair of plates. Also this paper deals with the fabrication of multicrystalline silicon solar cells with PECVD SiN layers combined with high-throughput screen printing and RTP firing. Using this sequence we were able to obtain solar cells with an efficiency of 14% for polished multi crystalline Si wafers of size 125 m square.

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Improvement on the Passivation Effect of PA-ALD Al2O3 Layer Deposited by PA-ALD in Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells (결정질 실리콘 태양전지를 위한 PA-ALD Al2O3 막의 패시베이션 효과 향상 연구)

  • Song, Se Young;Kang, Min Gu;Song, Hee-Eun;Chang, Hyo Sik
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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    • v.26 no.10
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    • pp.754-759
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    • 2013
  • Aluminum oxide($Al_2O_3$) film deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) is known to supply excellent surface passivation properties on crystalline Si surfaces. Since $Al_2O_3$ has fixed negative charge, it forms effective surface passivation by field effect passivation on the rear side in p-type silicon solar cell. However, $Al_2O_3$ layer formed by ALD process needs very long process time, which is not applicable in mass production of silicon solar cells. In this paper, plasma-assisted ALD(PA-ALD) was applied to form $Al_2O_3$ to reduce the process time. $Al_2O_3$ synthesized by ALD on c-Si (100) wafers contains a very thin interfacial $SiO_2$ layer, which was confirmed by FTIR and TEM. To improve passivation quality of $Al_2O_3$ layer, the deposition temperature was changed in range of $150{\sim}350^{\circ}C$, then the annealing temperature and time were varied. As a result, the silicon wafer with aluminum oxide film formed in $250^{\circ}C$, $400^{\circ}C$ and 10 min for the deposition temperature, the annealing temperature and time, respectively, showed the best lifetime of 1.6ms. We also observed blistering with nanometer size during firing of $Al_2O_3$ deposited on p-type silicon.

Physics of the Earth's plasma sheet associated with substorm triggering

  • Lee, Dae-Yeong
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.36 no.1
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    • pp.33.1-33.1
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    • 2011
  • The plasma sheet of the Earth's magnetosphere is a sheet of hot plasmas in the magnetotail region, dividing the two (northern and southern) lobes of the Earth's magnetic field. It is the key region that is often closely linked to various electromagnetic dynamics in the Earth's magnetosphere-ionosphere system. In particular, it is the region that is most crucial for substorms, which is one of the most dynamic phenomena in the Earth's magnetosphere. The question of substorm triggering remains highly controversial until today, and at the center of the controversy there are several critical physics issues of the plasma sheet. In this talk I will introduce some of the physics issues of the plasma sheet. The specific topics that this talk will cover are (i) the general properties of the plasma sheet, (ii) fast plasma jets and plasma transport problem, (iii) stability/instability problem, and (iv) effects of thin current sheet. I will also present some of our group's recent findings regarding these topics, as obtained by comprehensive analyses of various observational data. The level and content of this talk are designed to be comprehensible to not only space physicists but also the scientists in a related field such as solar and heliospheric physics.

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Numerical Study of Inflation of a Dipolar Magnetic Field by Injecting Plasma with Different Beta

  • Kajimura, Yoshihiro;Funaki, Ikkoh;Shinohara, Iku;Usui, Hideyuki;Nakashima, Hideki
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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    • 2008.03a
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    • pp.553-556
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    • 2008
  • A Magneto Plasma Sail(MPS) produces propulsive force by the interaction between the solar wind and an artificial magnetic field inflated by injecting plasma. Using a 2D hybrid PIC code, we evaluate the inflation of magnetic field when Argon(Ar) plasma with different ${\beta}_{in}$ including the value less than one is injected into the dipolar magnetic field generated by a superconducting coil. It is found that the magnetic field can be inflated by injecting plasma within an angle of $30^{\circ}$ in the polar direction and the magnetic field decays in the polar direction according to $B{\propto}r^{-2.4}$ after the plasma(${\beta}_{in}$=0.1) is injected.

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HIGH-ENERGY SOLAR PARTICLE EVENTS IN THREE DIMENSIONS

  • Kocharov, Leon
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.35 no.2
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    • pp.45.1-45.1
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    • 2010
  • Using SOHO particle and EUV detection and radio spectrograms from both ground-based and spaceborne instruments, we have studied the first phase of major solar energetic particle (SEP) events associated with wide and fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs) centered at different solar longitudes. Observations support the idea that acceleration of SEPs starts in the helium-rich plasma of the eruption's core well behind the CME leading edge, in association with coronal shocks and magnetic reconnection caused by the CME liftoff; and those "coronal" components dominate during the first ~1.5 hour of the SEP event, not yet being hidden by the CME-bow shock in solar wind. At magnetic connection to the eruption's periphery, onset of SEP emission is delayed for a time of the lateral expansion that is visualized by global coronal (EIT) wave. The first, "coronal" phase of SEP acceleration is followed by a second phase associated with CME-driven shock wave in solar wind, which accelerates high-energy ions from a helium-poor particle population until the interplanetary shock slows down to below 1000 km/s. Based on these and other SOHO observations, we discuss what findings can be expected from STEREO in the SOHO era perspective.

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Compositional SIMS Depth Profiling of CIGS film

  • Kim, Gyeong-Jung;Hwang, Hye-Hyeon;Jang, Jong-Sik;Jeong, Yong-Deok
    • Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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    • 2011.02a
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    • pp.367-367
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    • 2011
  • CIGS solar cell with copper, indium, gallium and selenium is a second generation solar cells for the lowering of the manufacturing cost. The relative ratio of the four elements is one of the most important measurement issues because the photovoltaic property of CIGS solar cell depends on the crystalline structure of the CIGS layer. However, there is no useful analysis method for the composition of the CIGS layer. Recently, AES depth profiling analysis of CIGS films has been studied with a reference material certified by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. However, there are some problems in AES depth profiling analysis of CIGS films. In this study, the in-depth profiling analysis was investigated by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) depth profiling analysis. We will present the compositional depth profiling of CIGS films by SIMS and its applications for the development of CIGS solar cells with high efficiency.

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An Automated System for Empirical Forecasting of Solar Flares and CMEs

  • Park, Sung-Hong;Yamamoto, Tetsuya
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.37 no.2
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    • pp.129.2-129.2
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    • 2012
  • Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are two major solar eruptive phenomena which can cause enormous economic and commercial losses: (1) flares are sudden, rapid, and intense brightenings from radio waves to Gamma-rays in the chromosphere and corona, and (2) CMEs are large-scale transient eruptions of magnetized plasma from the solar corona that propagate outward into interplanetary space. Most flares and CMEs occur in magnetically complicated solar active regions (ARs). Therefore, it is crucial to investigate magnetic fields in ARs and their temporal variations for understanding a precondition and a trigger mechanism related to flare/CME initiation. In this presentation, we will introduce an automated system for empirical forecasting of flares and CMEs in ARs using full-disk photospheric line-of-sight magnetogram data taken by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard the SDO.

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PLASMA BLOB EVENTS OBSERVED BY KOMPSAT-1 AND DMSP F15 IN THE LOW LATITUDE NIGHTTIME UPPER IONOSPHERE

  • 박재흥;이재진;이은상;민경욱
    • Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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    • 2003.10a
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    • pp.81-81
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    • 2003
  • We report the plasma blob events that were observed from KOMPSAT-1 (2250 LT, 685-km altitude) and from DMSP F15 (2130 LT,840-km altitude) in the low-latitude ionosphere. The global distribution of blobs showed a season-longitudinal dependence similar to the distribution of the equatorial plasma bubbles, although they were observed along the ${\pm}$15 dip latitudes. The blobs drifted upward relative to the ambient plasmas, and the electron temperatures and H+ proportions were lower within the blobs compared to those in the background. These characteristics of the plasma blobs are very similar to the characteristics of the equatorial plasma bubbles. Then, we suggest that the blobs were originated from the lower altitudes by the mechanism that drives an upward drift of the plasma bubbles. The blob events did not occur in a correlated way with the magnetic activity or daily variation of the solar activity.

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Nanoparticle generation and growth in low temperature plasma process (저온 플라즈마 공정에서의 나노 미립자 생성 및 성장)

  • Kim, Dong-Joo;Kim, Kyo-Seon
    • Particle and aerosol research
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    • v.5 no.3
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    • pp.95-109
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    • 2009
  • A low temperature plasma process has been widely used for semiconductor fabrication and can also be applied for the preparation of solar cell, MEMS or NEMS, but they are notorious in the point of particle contamination. The nano-sized particles can be generated in the low temperature plasma process and they can induce several serious defects on the performance and quality of microelectronic devices and also on the cost of final products. For the preparation of high quality thin films of high efficiency by the low temperature plasma process, it is desirable to increase the deposition rate of thin films with reducing the particle contamination in the plasmas. In this paper, we introduced the studies on the generation and growth of nanoparticles in the low temperature plasmas and tried to introduce the recent interesting studies on nanoparticle generation in the plasma reactors.

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A study on Silicon dry Etching for Solar Cell Fabrication Using Hollow Cathode Plasma System (태양전지 제작을 위한 Hollow Cathode Plasma System의 실리콘 건식식각에 관한 연구)

  • ;Suresh Kumar Dhungel
    • The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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    • v.53 no.2
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    • pp.62-66
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    • 2004
  • This paper investigated the characteristics of a newly developed high density hollow cathode plasma (HCP) system and its application for the etching of silicon wafers. We used SF$_{6}$ and $O_2$ gases in the HCP dry etch process. Silicon etch rate of $0.5\mu\textrm{m}$/min was achieved with $SF_6$$O_2$plasma conditions having a total gas pressure of 50mTorr, and RF power of 100 W. This paper presents surface etching characteristics on a crystalline silicon wafer and large area cast type multicrystlline silicon wafer. The results of this experiment can be used for various display systems such as thin film growth and etching for TFT-LCDs, emitter tip formations for FEDs, and bright plasma discharge for PDP applications.s.