Aluminum induced crystallization of sputtered hydrogenated amorphous silicon for economically viable thin film silicon solar cells

Author

Hossain, Maruf ; Abu-Safe, Husam H. ; Naseem, Hameed ; Brown, William D. ; Meyer, Harry

Author_Institution

Electr. Eng. Dept., Arkansas Univ., Fayetteville, AR, USA

fYear

2005

Firstpage

1088

Lastpage

1091

Abstract

Poly-crystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin films have been prepared by aluminum induced crystallization (AIC) technique. Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin films were prepared by sputtering a silicon target in hydrogen and argon ambient. It was observed that deposition rates increased more than two folds with the introduction of the hydrogen in the deposition chamber. The a-Si:H thin films were coated with a thin layer of sputtered aluminum (Al). X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed that the crystallization commenced at as low as 225 °C. The depth profile of the annealed samples, obtained by scanning Auger microscopy (SAM), did not show any layer exchange below 300 °C. The SAM analysis showed clear layer exchange in the higher temperature (>350 °C) region.

Keywords

X-ray diffraction; aluminium; amorphous semiconductors; annealing; crystallisation; elemental semiconductors; hydrogen; semiconductor thin films; silicon; solar cells; sputter deposition; Al; Si:H; X-ray diffraction; XRD; aluminum induced crystallization; annealing; argon ambient; depth profile; hydrogen ambient; polycrystalline silicon thin films; scanning Auger microscopy; sputtered aluminum; sputtered hydrogenated amorphous silicon; sputtering; thin film silicon solar cells; Aluminum; Amorphous silicon; Argon; Crystallization; Hydrogen; Photovoltaic cells; Semiconductor thin films; Sputtering; X-ray diffraction; X-ray scattering;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2005. Conference Record of the Thirty-first IEEE

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8707-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2005.1488324

Filename

1488324