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The aims of this work are to getter undesirable impurities from low-cost multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafers and then enhance their electronic properties. We used an efficient process which consists of applying phosphorus diffusion into a sacrificial porous silicon (PS) layer in which the gettered impurities have been trapped after the heat treatment. As we have expected, after removing the phosphorus-rich PS layer, the electrical properties of the mc-Si wafers were significantly improved. The PS layers, realized on both sides of the mc-Si substrates, were formed by the stain-etching technique. The phosphorus treatment was achieved using a liquid POCl3-based source on both sides of the mc-Si wafers. The realized phosphorus/PS/Si/PS/phosphorus structures were annealed at a temperature ranging between 700°C and 950°C under a controlled O2 atmosphere, which allows phosphorus to diffuse throughout the PS layers and to getter eventual metal impurities towards the phosphorus-doped PS layer. The effect of this gettering procedure was investigated by means of internal quantum efficiency and the dark current–voltage (I-V) characteristics. The minority carrier lifetime measurements were made using a WTC-120 photoconductance lifetime tester. The serial resistance and the shunt resistance carried out from the dark I-V curves confirm this gettering-related solar cell improvement. It has been shown that the photovoltaic parameters of the gettered silicon solar cells were improved with regard to the ungettered one, which proves the beneficial effect of this gettering process on the conversion efficiency of the multicrystalline silicon solar cells.

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The aim of this work is to investigate the dependence of ZnS thin films structural and optical properties with the solution flow rate during the deposition using an ultrasonic spray method. The solution flow rate ranged from 10 to 50 mL/h and the substrate temperature was maintained at 450 °C. The effect of the solution flow rate on the properties of ZnS thin films was investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optical transmittance spectroscopy (UV–V) and the four-point method. The X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the deposited material was pure zinc sulphide, it has a cubic sphalerite structure with preferential orientation along the (111) direction. The grain size values were calculated and found to be between 38 to 82 nm. SEM analysis revealed that the deposited thin films have good adherence to the substrate surfaces, are homogeneous and have high density. The average transmission of all films is up more than 65% in the range wavelength from 200 to 1100 nm and their band gap energy values were found between 3.5–3.92 eV. The obtained film thickness varies from 390 to 1040 nm. Moreover, the electric resistivity of the deposited films increases with the increasing of the solution flow rate between 3.51 × 105 and 11 × 105 Ω·cm.

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