Improvement of haze ratio of DC-sputtered ZnO:Al thin films through HF vapor texturing

Recently, the Al-doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) films are intensively used in thin film a-Si solar cell applications due to their high transmittance and good conductivity. The textured ZnO:Al films are used to enhance the light trapping in thin film solar cells. The wet etch process is used to texture ZnO:Al films by dipping in diluted acidic solutions like HCl or HF. During that process the glass substrate could be damaged by the acidic solution and it may be difficult to apply it for the inline mass production process since it has to be done outside the chamber. In this paper we report a new technique to control the surface morphology of RF-sputtered ZnO:Al films. The ZnO:Al films are textured with vaporized HF formed by the mixture of HF and H2SiO3 solution. Even though the surface of textured ZnO:Al films by vapor etching process showed smaller and sharper surface structures compared to that of the films textured by wet etching, the haze value was dramatically improved. We achieved the high haze value of 78% at the wavelength of 540 nm by increasing etching time and HF concentration. The haze value of about 58% was achieved at the wavelength of 800 nm when vapor texturing was used. The ZnO:Al film texture by HCl had haze ratio of about 9.5 % at 800 nm and less than 40 % at 540 nm. In addition to low haze ratio, the texturing by HCl was very difficult to control etching and to keep reproducibility due to its very fast etching speed.