Recombination activity enhancement by stress in silicon

Author

Gundel, Paul ; Schubert, Martin C. ; Heinz, Friedemann D. ; Warta, Wilhelm

Author_Institution

Fraunhofer Inst. for Solar Energy Syst. ISE, Freiburg, Germany

fYear

2010

fDate

20-25 June 2010

Abstract

The recombination activity of grain boundaries and precipitate colonies is analyzed with submicron spatial resolution and compared to the surrounding stress field. This analysis reveals a positive correlation between tensile stress and recombination activity and a negative correlation between compressive stress and recombination activity. This correlation can be explained by the stress induced mobility enhancement due to the strong piezoresistance of silicon. This observation could lead to a significant improvement of multicrystalline silicon solar cells by engineering the incorporated stress fields during the block casting and the solar cell processing.

Keywords

carrier mobility; casting; elemental semiconductors; grain boundaries; piezoresistance; silicon; solar cells; block casting; compressive stress; grain boundaries; mobility enhancement; multicrystalline silicon solar cell; negative correlation; piezoresistance; positive correlation; recombination activity enhancement; stress field; submicron spatial resolution; tensile stress;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2010 35th IEEE

Conference_Location

Honolulu, HI

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5890-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2010.5616094

Filename

5616094