Low‐temperature deposition of high quality β‐FeSi₂ films by co‐sputtering of Fe and Si for β‐FeSi₂/Si heterojunction solar cell

Abstract

Single‐phase β‐FeSi2 films have been prepared by Fe‐Si mixed targets in a facing target sputtering (FTS) system. Compared with depositing iron on silicon, co‐sputtering of Fe and Si atoms in as‐deposited samples guarantees that Fe and Si atoms only need relative low energy via short distance migration to form iron silicide during the annealing process, which helps decreasing annealing temperature and reducing annealing time. Then pure single‐phase β‐FeSi2 films can be obtained at a low annealing temperature 600 °C in this instance. By adjusting the sputtering areas of Fe and Si targets, it’s convenient to control the Fe/Si atom ratios in as‐deposited samples and thus p‐type and n‐type films can be obtained easily. The best n‐type β‐FeSi2 film on Si(111) substrate shows an electron concentration of 1.7×1016 cm‐3 and a Hall mobility of 488cm2/Vs, respectively. An n‐β‐FeSi2/p‐Si(111) heterojunction solar cell has been fabricated with a conversion efficiency 0.54% (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

β-FeSi2as the bottom absorber of triple-junction thin-film solar cells: A numerical study

“…Recently, photovoltaics employing β -FeSi 2 have already been reported. [7][8][9][10][11][12] However, there are limited studies on the single-junction solar cells. In this paper, we propose an a-Si/µc-Si/β -FeSi 2 triple-junction thin-film solar cell in which β -FeSi 2 is used as the absorber material of the bottom cell, the long-wave spectral response will be widened from 1100 nm in the a-Si/µc-Si tandem structure to above 1400 nm in this triple-junction solar cell.…”

Preparation and Formation Mechanism of Highly Dispersed Manganese Silicide on Silica by MOCVD of Mn(CO)5SiCl3

“…Various preparation methods for metal silicides have been reported so far, such as evaporation and sputtering for films,9, 10 and reactions of transition metal sources (metal vapor or metal halides) with silicon substrates and CVD for nanowires 11–13. MOCVD has proved to be effective for preparing highly dispersed and nanostructured materials in a controlled and reproducible manner 14.…”

Microstructure and interdiffusion behaviour of β-FeSi2flat islands grown on Si(111) surfaces

“…Ecologically friendly semiconducting iron disilicide, -FeSi 2 , has attracted much attention for potential applications in Sibased optoelectronic devices (Lange, 1997;Nakamura et al, 2008), magnetic devices (Hattori et al, 2007;Hamdeh et al, 2010) and solar cells (Hou et al, 2010). Many growth methods have been attempted for -FeSi 2 on and in Si, but it has been difficult to obtain high-quality -FeSi 2 films because -FeSi 2 has a complicated crystalline structure (Massalski et al, 1992;Cho et al, 2009) and tends to agglutinate (Tu & Mayer, 1978).…”