Ultra-high quality surface passivation of crystalline silicon wafers in large area parallel plate reactor at 40 MHz

High quality amorphous–crystalline silicon heterostructure prepared by grid-biased remote radio-frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition

“…3 that post-deposition annealing can significantly improve the passivation quality of a-Si:H-c-Si samples. The improvement of passivation quality with post-deposition annealing is also seen with a-Si:H prepared by other methods [14,17]. This improvement is attributed to thermally activated hydrogen rearrangement near the amorphous-crystalline interface leading to additional passivation of dangling bonds at the interface [41].…”

“…Moreover, all a-Si:H depositions were done with pure SiH 4 without any H 2 dilution. Chemical (e g., H 2 O 2 ) and hydrogen plasma treatments to c-Si wafers prior to a-Si:H deposition as well as H 2 dilution during the a-Si:H deposition have been shown to improve the passivation of c-Si wafers [17,42,[46][47][48] and thus could potentially lead to further improvements to the results reported in this study.…”

“…Nevertheless, RF [12] and VHF PECVD [17,18] currently appear to be the mainstay in the industry for amorphous-crystalline silicon heterojunction synthesis given that these techniques are well-established production platforms. Accordingly, heterojunction materials and devices synthesized using these techniques could potentially benefit from a generic advance in the method of deposition which overcomes direct plasma exposure and lack of control of precursor species at the growth surface.…”

Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells with Thin Silicon Passivation Film Deposited prior to Phosphorous Diffusion

“…Today, many research groups are focusing on various techniques for producing high efficiency p-type c-Si solar cells, while paying attention to the issue of cost reduction commensurate with a mass-production process. With this aim, many techniques for manufacturing silicon solar cells have been developed, including selective emitter solar cells [1][2][3], buried contact solar cells [4], surface passivated solar cells [5][6][7][8], back-side contact solar cells [9,10], and heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT) solar cells [11][12][13][14].…”

“…A thermal oxide layer has been considered a good candidate material for reducing surface dangling bonds [15], while amorphous silicon nitride with hydrogen, that is, SiNx:H, has proven a good surface passivating counterpart [16,17]. Hydrogen-rich amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), on the other hand, has been a well-known surface passivating material [5][6][7][8]. In the latter application, a-Si:H passivates the front surface of a phosphorus diffused silicon solar cell mainly owing to the annihilation of surface dangling bonds by hydrogen atoms originally residing in the a-Si:H layer.…”