Effect of Thickness on Boron-Doped Silicon Thin Film Deposited onto Silver-Aluminium Back Contact-Coated Plastic Substrate by Screen Printing

摘要

This paper investigates the effect of thickness on the properties of p-type polycrystalline Si thin filmdeposited onto silver-aluminium back contact-coated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. In thefabrication, the substrate was coated using screen printing technology, and boric acid (0.1 g/l) wasused as the boron-doping source. Three different weights of boron-doped Si powder were dissolved in40 ml polyethylene glycol to create Si pastes with different viscosities. These pastes were used to printthree different thicknesses of p-type Si thin film on Ag-Al alloy-coated PET substrates. Differenttechniques were employed to analyze the effects of varying thicknesses on the properties of Si thinlayers. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to determine the crystallite size (D) and stress in the Si thinfilm. Surface morphology and roughness were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) andatomic force microscopy (AFM). The thin film component elements were detected using EDXattached to an SEM system. The carrier concentration, Hall mobility, and other electrical propertieswere determined through Hall Effect measurements. The optical band gap was determined from theUV-visible absorbance spectrum, and the results indicate that band gap energy is proportional to thethickness of the Si layer.