Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition and characterization of TiO2 antireflection coatings for monocrystalline silicon solar cells

This paper presents an efficient and less expensive method to fabricate high quality titanium dioxide (TiO₂) thin films by APCVD technique using TiCl₄ as precursor for application as antireflection coatings on monocrystalline silicon solar cells. The structural, electrical and optical properties of the produced coatings were successfully characterized by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Four Point Probe (FPP) and Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE) combined with Transmission Spectroscopy, respectively. A perfect agreement between the AFM results and ellipsometric results was confirmed. For ellipsometry modelling process, the TiO₂ optical constants were successfully modelled by means of the “Multilayer Structure Model” which offers the best results. The refractive index of our TiO₂ thin films was found to be n = 2.25 at the wavelength λ = 550 nm, with a thickness of 56.2 nm. The obtained results demonstrate the real opportunity of the APCVD technique to prepare high quality antireflection coatings for high efficiency silicon solar cells.