Microstructural influence of hydrogenated amorphous silicon on polycrystalline emitter solar cells prepared by top-down aluminum induced crystallization

Author

Shumate, S.D. ; Hafeezuddin, M.K. ; Hutchings, Douglas A. ; Naseem, Hameed A.

Author_Institution

Microelectron.-Photonics, Univ. of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

19-24 June 2011

Abstract

Top-down Aluminum Induced Crystallization (TAIC) is a variant of metal induced crystallization (MIC) in which aluminum and silicon layers do not exchange places. This study examines the influence of the quality of hydrogenated amorphous silicon, a-Si:H, on the resultant output of TAIC polycrystalline emitter solar cells by controlling the hydrogen content and bonding distribution during a-Si:H deposition. Surprisingly, it was found that device-quality a-Si:H was not the best precursor for TAIC as determined by solar cell output characteristics.

Keywords

aluminium; amorphous semiconductors; crystallisation; elemental semiconductors; silicon; solar cells; Al; MIC; Si:H; TAIC polycrystalline emitter solar cells; bonding distribution; hydrogen content; hydrogenated amorphous silicon; metal-induced crystallization; microstructural influence; silicon layers; solar cell output characteristics; top-down aluminum-induced crystallization; Aluminum; Amorphous silicon; Crystallization; Films; Helium; Photovoltaic cells; Substrates;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2011 37th IEEE

Conference_Location

Seattle, WA

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-9966-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2011.6186594

Filename

6186594