Determination of the Interface States in Amorphous/Crystalline Silicon Using Surface Photovoltage Spectroscopy

Author

Hao Li ; Xiangbo Zeng ; Ping Yang ; Xiaodong Zhang ; Xiaobing Xie ; Jingyan Li ; Qiming Wang

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. on Integrated Optoelectron., Inst. of Semicond., Beijing, China

Volume

34

Issue

9

fYear

2013

fDate

Sept. 2013

Firstpage

1079

Lastpage

1081

Abstract

The interface state level at amorphous/crystalline silicon (a-Si:H/c-Si) heterojunctions is identified with surface photovoltage spectroscopy (SPS). A positive slope alteration of SPS in 1.2 eV indicates there is a primarily empty state at Ev(c-Si)+0.75 eV. Using hydrogen plasma treatment (HPT) on c-Si surface, we observed a systematic variation in the SPS signal upon HPT time, which was associated to the change of interface state density. Our results show that the SPS can be used to optimize the heterojunction with intrinsic thin-layer solar cell preparation process.

Keywords

amorphous semiconductors; elemental semiconductors; hydrogen; interface states; plasma materials processing; silicon; solar cells; surface photovoltage; HPT; SPS; amorphous-crystalline silicon heterojunctions; electron volt energy 1.2 eV; hydrogen plasma treatment; interface state density; interface state level; intrinsic thin-layer solar cell preparation process; positive slope alteration; surface photovoltage spectroscopy; Heterojunctions; Interface states; Photovoltaic cells; Plasmas; Silicon; Spectroscopy; Surface treatment; Defect level; heterojunction; solar cells; surface photovoltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2013.2273171

Filename

6568882