Metal-induced growth of microcrystalline silicon thin films for solar cells.

摘要

The research focused on the process study for deposition of device quality polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin films and solar cell fabrication by using a novel technique, metal-induced growth (MIG). Cobalt (Co) is introduced in the studies as a seed layer metal for the first time, while nickel (Ni) was another candidate. To grow the poly-Si, Co or Ni seed-layers were deposited on the foreign substrates by thermal evaporation with a few nm to 50 nm thickness. Substrates were transferred into the sputtering system for Si sputtering at elevated temperature from 525°C to 625°C. The Co or Ni reacted with sputtered Si to form metal disilicides which have very small lattice mismatch with Si (0.4% lattice mismatch for NiSi2 and Si, 1.2% lattice mismatch for CoSi2 and Si). The crystalline metal disilicides provide nucleation sites for poly-Si growth. With metal-induced growth, the relatively large-grain poly-Si films can be produced at relatively low temperatures on the various foreign substrates. Compared with Ni induced Si films, Co induced poly-Si has longer minority lifetime of 0.46 mus as deposited and 1.3 mus after annealing. A two-step sputtering method used for film deposition showed superiority over single step sputtering by achieving Si films with larger grain size (over 1 mum) and less contamination. A double seed layer (5nm Co/50nm Ni) method was developed to produce the Si film with less Ni diffusion into Si. Metal-induced Si films were deposited on flexible thin tungsten substrates for solar cell fabrication. The good back Ohmic contact (metal disilicide) was formed naturally when the Si film was deposited. In this work, the solar cells were fabricated successfully by using metal-induced grown poly-Si. With the fabricated Schottky and P/N junction solar cells, the metal-induced growth processing parameters were studied. It was found that low-pressure sputtering, oxygen control during film growth, post-annealing and Si film hydrogenation are important to produce high quality poly-Si with fewer defects. The Schottky solar cell with optimized processing parameters showed the Jsc and Voc of 12 mA/cm2 and 0.2 V, respectively. By passivating the MIG muc-Si surface with hydrogenated nanocrystalline Si (nc-Si:H), the Voc was improved to 0.31 V. In addition, the current transport mechanism in Schottky and P/N junction devices were studied for different film growth conditions. The results showed that two-step sputtering, oxygen control and hydrogenation improved the quality of the Si film and devices.