Improved amorphous/crystalline silicon interface passivation by hydrogen plasma treatment

Descoeudres, Antoine; Barraud, Loris; Wolf, Stefaan De; Strahm, B.; Lachenal, D.; Guérin, C.; Holman, Zachary C.; Zicarelli, F.; Demaurex, Bénédicte; Seif, Johannes P.; Holovský, Jakub; Ballif, Christophe

doi:10.1063/1.3641899

Cited by 248 publications

(189 citation statements)

References 24 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…Epitaxial growth is typically avoided by tuning the plasma parameters, although "pulsed" material deposition with interleaved H 2 plasma treatments has been shown to be effective as well. 35 In this work, we show that a different approach can be employed to produce highly passivated a-Si:H/c-Si interfaces that are free of local epitaxy. Using an inductively coupled plasma (ICP), highly porous 10 nm thick a-Si:H thin films have been prepared at very low deposition temperatures of C. Although such highly porous films provide virtually no passivation in their as-deposited state, a high level of surface passivation can be obtained by a very brief postdeposition annealing treatment of 30 s at 300 C, as evidenced by minority carrier lifetime values in the range of $1-4 ms. One of the key benefits of the low-temperature deposition is the facile suppression of epitaxial growth.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Correlating the silicon surface passivation to the nanostructure of low-temperature a-Si:H after rapid thermal annealing

Macco

Melskens

Podraza³

et al. 2017

Journal of Applied Physics

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Using an inductively coupled plasma, hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films have been prepared at very low temperatures (<50 °C) to provide crystalline silicon (c-Si) surface passivation. Despite the limited nanostructural quality of the a-Si:H bulk, a surprisingly high minority carrier lifetime of ∼4 ms is demonstrated after a rapid thermal annealing treatment. Besides the excellent level of surface passivation, the main advantage of the low-temperature approach is the facile suppression of undesired epitaxial growth. The correlation between the a-Si:H nanostructure and the activation of a-Si:H/c-Si interface passivation, upon annealing, has been studied in detail. This yields a structural model that qualitatively describes the different processes that take place in the a-Si:H films during annealing. The presented experimental findings and insights can prove to be useful in the further development of very thin a-Si:H passivation layers for use in silicon heterojunction solar cells.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Correlating the silicon surface passivation to the nanostructure of low-temperature a-Si:H after rapid thermal annealing

Macco

Melskens

Podraza³

et al. 2017

Journal of Applied Physics

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“…28 Indium tin oxide (ITO) was sputtered 5 and silver was evaporated over the entire back side of each cell. Laser-cut silicon shadow masks were aligned by eye to cover the cell area during deposition of the front contact, defining cells with areas of 2 Â 2, 4 Â 4, and 6 Â 6 mm 2 , as shown in Figure 1(c).…”

Section: Experimental and Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of lateral transport through the inversion layer in amorphous silicon/crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells

Filipič

Holman

Smole

et al. 2013

Journal of Applied Physics

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In amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells, an inversion layer is present at the front interface. By combining numerical simulations and experiments, we examine the contribution of the inversion layer to lateral transport and assess whether this layer can be exploited to replace the front transparent conductive oxide (TCO) in devices. For this, heterojunction solar cells of different areas (2 Â 2, 4 Â 4, and 6 Â 6 mm 2 ) with and without TCO layers on the front side were prepared. Laser-beam-induced current measurements are compared with simulation results from the ASPIN2 semiconductor simulator. Current collection is constant across millimeter distances for cells with TCO; however, carriers traveling more than a few hundred microns in cells without TCO recombine before they can be collected. Simulations show that increasing the valence band offset increases the concentration of holes under the surface of n-type crystalline silicon, which increases the conductivity of the inversion layer. Unfortunately, this also impedes transport across the barrier to the emitter. We conclude that the lateral conductivity of the inversion layer may not suffice to fully replace the front TCO in heterojunction devices. V C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

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“…13 It has been shown that hydrogen is essential for the passivation, 14 as is reflected in the V oc of SHJ devices. 5 For this purpose H 2 plasma treatments during 15 and post-deposition 16,17 have been proposed achieving state-of-the-art passivation. In both cases hydrogen incorporation led to a significant improvement in passivation, while attempts to apply pre-deposition hydrogen treatment on the substrate resulted in the creation of defects on the c-Si surface and proved detrimental for the passivation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface passivation of c-Si for silicon heterojunction solar cells using high-pressure hydrogen diluted plasmas

et al. 2015

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In this work we demonstrate excellent c-Si surface passivation by depositing a-Si:H in the high-pressure and high hydrogen dilution regime. By using high hydrogen dilution of the precursor gases during deposition the hydrogen content of the layers is sufficiently increased, while the void fraction is reduced, resulting in dense material. Results show a strong dependence of the lifetime on the substrate temperature and a weaker dependence on the hydrogen dilution. After applying a post-deposition annealing step on the samples equilibration of the lifetime occurs independent of the initial nanostructure.

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Improved amorphous/crystalline silicon interface passivation by hydrogen plasma treatment

Cited by 248 publications

References 24 publications

Correlating the silicon surface passivation to the nanostructure of low-temperature a-Si:H after rapid thermal annealing

Correlating the silicon surface passivation to the nanostructure of low-temperature a-Si:H after rapid thermal annealing

Analysis of lateral transport through the inversion layer in amorphous silicon/crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells

Surface passivation of c-Si for silicon heterojunction solar cells using high-pressure hydrogen diluted plasmas

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