Endogenous and exogenous hydrogen influence on amorphous silicon thin films analysis by pulsed radiofrequency glow discharge optical emission spectrometry

A path towards a better characterisation of silicon thin‐film solar cells: depth profile analysis by pulsed radiofrequency glow discharge optical emission spectrometry

“…It has been reported that the addition of molecular hydrogen to Ar GD seriously affects the intensity of the analytes, and therefore, a different trend for the two types of standard could be expected . However, as previously demonstrated by our group, the effect of endogenous hydrogen (a‐Si:H layers) does not exhibit such critical influence on emission intensities . As can be seen in Figure (a), a linear relationship was obtained for the silicon calibration graph using the two types of standards.…”

“…continuous operation mode) up to 20 kHz, and duty cycle (relationship between pulse width and pulse period) can be optimised between 18% and 50%. In this work and considering previous studies carried out in our group for the analysis of a‐Si:H TFSC , 10 kHz and 25% duty cycle were selected as a compromise between high sensitivity and good depth resolution. The operation mode ‘constant pressure–constant forward power’ was used in all the experiments.…”

“…However, to know the layer thickness and composition as well as possible concentration gradients, further investigations to develop proper quantification methods are needed. In this vein, it should be stated that the presence of hydrogen on a-Si:H thin films represents a challenge for quantitative analysis because of the so-called hydrogen effect [19], and possible hydrogen sources have been evaluated in our previous works by rf-PGD-OES and rf-PGD-MS in a-Si:H thin films [20,21]. By both analytical methods, we observed that molecular hydrogen added to the discharge gas plays a more critical role than the endogenous hydrogen present in the sample itself (samples with hydrogen content below 10% atomic).…”

Atomic spectrometry update. Industrial analysis: metals, chemicals and advanced materials

“…A paper similar in design to the one described above (ref. 248) that discussed the effects of endogenous and exogenous hydrogen during the analysis of thin films was presented by Sanchez et al 249 This application discussed the use of GD-OES as a means of detection rather than GD-TOF-MS. Using a pressure of 600 Pa and a power of 50 W, the other operating conditions were optimized for the analysis of both a conducting material and a silicon wafer.…”

Depth Profile Analysis of Amorphous Silicon Thin Film Solar Cells by Pulsed Radiofrequency Glow Discharge Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry

“…In this context, it should be stressed that the presence of hydrogen in a-Si:H thin films could represent a challenge for quantitative analysis because of the so-called "hydrogen effect": it has been previously reported that the addition of hydrogen to Ar GD could affect the intensity of the analytes and reduces the sputtering rate [18,19]. We have reported that molecular hydrogen added to the discharge gas seems to play a more critical role than the endogenous hydrogen present in the sample itself (e.g., for samples with hydrogen content in the order of 10% atomic) [20,21].…”