• Title/Summary/Keyword: Application to solar cells

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Effect of deposition parameters on structure of ZnO films deposited by an DC Arc Plasmatron

  • Penkov, Oleksiy V.;Chun, Se-Min;Kang, In-Jae;Lee, Heon-Ju
    • Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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    • 2011.02a
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    • pp.255-255
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    • 2011
  • Zinc oxide based thin films have been extensively studied in recent several years because they have very interesting properties and zinc oxide is non-poisonous, abundant and cheap material. ZnO films are employed in different applications like transparent conductive layers in solar cells, protective coatings and so on. Wide industrial application of the ZnO films requires of development of cheap, effective and scalable technology. Typically used technologies don't completely satisfy the industrial requirements. In the present work, we studied effect of the deposition parameters on the structure and properties of ZnO films deposited by DC arc plasmatron. The varied parameters were gas flow rates, precursor composition, substrate temperature and post-deposition annealing temperature. Vapor of Zinc acetylacetone was used as source materials, oxygen was used as working gas and argon was used as the cathode protective gas and a transport gas for the vapor. The plasmatron power was varied in the range of 700-1500 watts. Flow rate of the gases and substrate temperature rate were varied in the wide range to optimize the properties of the deposited coatings. After deposition films were annealed in the hydrogen atmosphere in the wide range of temperatures. Structure of coatings was investigated using XRD and SEM. Chemical composition was analyzed using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Sheet conductivity was measured by 4-point probe method. Optical properties of the transparent ZnO-based coatings were studied by the spectroscopy. It was shown that deposition by a DC Arc plasmatron can be used for low-cost production of zinc oxide films with good optical and electrical properties. Increasing of the oxygen content in the gas mixture during deposition allow to obtain high-resistive protective and insulation coatings with high adhesion to the metallic surface.

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Application of rapid thermal annealing process to the aluminum induced crystallization of amorphous silicon thin film (비정질 실리콘의 부분적 알루미늄 유도 결정화 공정에서의 급속 열처리 적용 가능성)

  • Hwang, Ji-Hyun;Yang, Su-Won;Kim, Young-Kwan
    • Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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    • v.29 no.2
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    • pp.50-53
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    • 2019
  • In this study, polycrystalline silicon thin film useful for the solar cells was fabricated by AIC(Aluminum Induced Crystallization) process. A diffusing barrier for this process is prepared with $Al_2O_3$. For the maximization of the grain size of the polycrystalline silicon, a selective blasting of the $Al_2O_3$ diffusing barrier was conducted before annealing treatment. The heat treatment for the activation of the amorphous-Si (a-Si) layer was carried out with Rapid Thermal Annealing (RTA) process. Crystallization of the a-Si layer was analyzed with XRD. It was confirmed that a-Si was crystallized at $500^{\circ}C$ and the silicon crystal is observed to be formed and the grain size of the polycrystalline silicon was observed to be $15.9{\mu}m$.

Comparison of Passivation Property on Hydrogenated Silicon Nitrides whose Antireflection Properties are Identical (반사방지 특성을 통일시킨 실리콘 질화막 간의 패시베이션 특성 비교)

  • Kim, Jae Eun;Lee, Kyung Dong;Kang, Yoonmook;Lee, Hae-Seok;Kim, Donghwan
    • Korean Journal of Materials Research
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    • v.26 no.1
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    • pp.47-53
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    • 2016
  • Silicon nitride ($SiN_x:H$) films made by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) are generally used as antireflection layers and passivation layers on solar cells. In this study, we investigated the properties of silicon nitride ($SiN_x:H$) films made by PECVD. The passivation properties of $SiN_x:H$ are focused on by making the antireflection properties identical. To make equivalent optical properties of silicon nitride films, the refractive index and thickness of the films are fixed at 2.0 and 90 nm, respectively. This limit makes it easier to evaluate silicon nitride film as a passivation layer in realistic application situations. Next, the effects of the mixture ratio of the process gases with silane ($SiH_4$) and ammonia ($NH_3$) on the passivation qualities of silicon nitride film are evaluated. The absorption coefficient of each film was evaluated by spectrometric ellipsometry, the minority carrier lifetimes were evaluated by quasi-steady-state photo-conductance (QSSPC) measurement. The optical properties were obtained using a UV-visible spectrophotometer. The interface properties were determined by capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurement and the film components were identified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy detection (RBS) - elastic recoil detection (ERD). In hydrogen passivation, gas ratios of 1:1 and 1:3 show the best surface passivation property among the samples.

Application of CMP Process to Improving Thickness-Uniformity of Sputtering-deposited CdTe Thin Film for Improvement of Optical Properties (스퍼터링 증확 CdTe 박막의 두께 불균일 현상 개선을 위한 화학적기계적연마 공정 적용 및 광특성 향상)

  • Park, Ju-Sun;Lim, Chae-Hyun;Ryu, Seung-Han;Myung, Kuk-Do;Kim, Nam-Hoon;Lee, Woo-Sun
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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    • 2010.06a
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    • pp.375-375
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    • 2010
  • CdTe as an absorber material is widely used in thin film solar cells with the heterostructure due to its almost ideal band gap energy of 1.45 eV, high photovoltaic conversion efficiency, low cost and stable performance. The deposition methods and preparation conditions for the fabrication of CdTe are very important for the achievement of high solar cell conversion efficiency. There are some rearranged reports about the deposition methods available for the preparation of CdTe thin films such as close spaced sublimation (CSS), physical vapor deposition (PVD), vacuum evaporation, vapor transport deposition (VTD), closed space vapor transport, electrodeposition, screen printing, spray pyrolysis, metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), and RF sputtering. The RF sputtering method for the preparation of CdTe thin films has important advantages in that the thin films can be prepared at low growth temperatures with large-area deposition suitable for mass-production. The authors reported that the optical and electrical properties of CdTe thin film were closely connected by the thickness-uniformity of the film in the previous study [1], which means that the better optical absorbance and the higher carrier concentration could be obtained in the better condition of thickness-uniformity for CdTe thin film. The thickness-uniformity could be controlled and improved by the some process parameters such as vacuum level and RF power in the sputtering process of CdTe thin films. However, there is a limitation to improve the thickness-uniformity only in the preparation process [1]. So it is necessary to introduce the external or additional method for improving the thickness-uniformity of CdTe thin film because the cell size of thin film solar cell will be enlarged. Therefore, the authors firstly applied the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process to improving the thickness-uniformity of CdTe thin films with a G&P POLI-450 CMP polisher [2]. CMP process is the most important process in semiconductor manufacturing processes in order to planarize the surface of the wafer even over 300 mm and to form the copper interconnects with damascene process. Some important CMP characteristics for CdTe were obtained including removal rate (RR), WIWNU%, RMS roughness, and peak-to-valley roughness [2]. With these important results, the CMP process for CdTe thin films was performed to improve the thickness-uniformity of the sputtering-deposited CdTe thin film which had the worst two thickness-uniformities of them. Some optical properties including optical transmittance and absorbance of the CdTe thin films were measured by using a UV-Visible spectrophotometer (Varian Techtron, Cary500scan) in the range of 400 - 800 nm. After CMP process, the thickness-uniformities became better than that of the best condition in the previous sputtering process of CdTe thin films. Consequently, the optical properties were directly affected by the thickness-uniformity of CdTe thin film. The absorbance of CdTe thin films was improved although the thickness of CdTe thin film was not changed.

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Cost-effective surface passication layers by RTP and PECVD (RTP 와 PECVD을 이용한 저가의 표면 passivation 막들의 특성연구)

  • Lee, Ji-Youn;Lee, Soo-Hong
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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    • 2004.05a
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    • pp.142-145
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    • 2004
  • In this work, we have investigated the application of rapid thermal processing (RTP) and plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) for surface passivation. Rapid thermal oxidation (RTO) has sufficiently low surface recombination velocities (SRV) $S_{eff}$ in spite of a thin oxides and short process time. The effective lifetime is increasing with an increase of the oxide thickness. In the same oxide thickness, The effective lifetime is independent on the process temperature and time. $S_{eff,max}$ is exponentially decreased with increasing oxide thickness. $S_{eff,max}$ can be reduced to 200 cm/s with only 10 nm oxide thickness. On the other hand, three different types of SiN are reviewed. SiN1 layer has a thickness of about 72 nm and a refractive index of 2.8. Also, The SiN1 has a high passivation quality. The effective lifetime and SRV of 1 $\Omega$ cm Float zone (FZ) silicon deposited with SiN1 is about 800 s and under 10 cm/s, respectively. The SiN2 is optimized for the use as an antireflection layer since a refractive index of 2.3. The SiN3 is almost amorphous silicon caused by less contents of N2 from total process. The effective lifetime on the FZ 1 ${\Omega}cm$ is over 1000 ${\mu}s$.

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Active Front End Rectifier Control of DC Distribution System Using Neural Network (신경회로망을 적용한 직류배전시스템의 AFE 정류기 제어에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Seongwan;Jeon, Hyeonmin;Kim, Jongsu
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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    • v.27 no.7
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    • pp.1124-1128
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    • 2021
  • As regulations of emissions from ships become more stringent, electric propulsion systems have been increasingly used to solve this problem in vessels ranging from large merchant ships to small and medium-sized ships. Methods for improving the efficiency of the electric propulsion system include the improvement of power sources; the use of a system linked to environmentally friendly power sources, such as batteries, fuel cells, and solar power; and the development of hardware and control methodology for rectifiers, power conversion devices, and propulsion motors. The method using a phase-shifting transformer with diodes has been widely used for rectification. Power semiconductor devices with grid connection to an environmentally friendly power source using DC distribution, a variable speed power source, and the application of small and medium-sized electric propulsion systems have been developed. Accordingly, the demand for active front-end (AFE) rectifiers is increasing. In this study, a method using a neural network rather than a conventional proportional-integral controller was proposed to control the AFE rectifier. Tested controller data were used to design a neural network controller trained through MATLAB/Simulink. The neural network controller was applied to a rectification system designed using PSIM software. The results indicated the effectiveness of improving the waveform and power factor DC output stage according to the load variation. The proposed system can be applied as a rectification system for small and medium-sized environmentally friendly ships.

Effects of thickness of GIZO active layer on device performance in oxide thin-film-transistors

  • Woo, C.H.;Jang, G.J.;Kim, Y.H.;Kong, B.H.;Cho, H.K.
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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    • 2009.06a
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    • pp.137-137
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    • 2009
  • Thin-film transistors (TFTs) that can be prepared at low temperatures have attracted much attention due to the great potential for flexible electronics. One of the mainstreams in this field is the use of organic semiconductors such as pentacene. But device performance of the organic TFTs is still limited by low field effect mobility or rapidly degraded after exposing to air in many cases. Another approach is amorphous oxide semiconductors. Amorphous oxide semiconductors (AOSs) have exactly attracted considerable attention because AOSs were fabricated at room temperature and used lots of application such as flexible display, electronic paper, large solar cells. Among the various AOSs, a-IGZO was considerable material because it has high mobility and uniform surface and good transparent. The high mobility is attributed to the result of the overlap of spherical s-orbital of the heavy pest-transition metal cations. This study is demonstrated the effect of thickness channel layer from 30nm to 200nm. when the thickness was increased, turn on voltage and subthreshold swing were decreased. a-IGZO TFTs have used a shadow mask to deposit channel and source/drain(S/D). a-IGZO were deposited on SiO2 wafer by rf magnetron sputtering. using power is 150W, working pressure is 3m Torr, and an O2/Ar(2/28 SCCM) atmosphere at room temperature. The electrodes were formed with Electron-beam evaporated Ti(30nm) and Au(70nm) structure. Finally, Al(150nm) as a gate metal was evaporated. TFT devices were heat treated in a furnace at $250^{\circ}C$ in nitrogen atmosphere for an hour. The electrical properties of the TFTs were measured using a probe-station to measure I-V characteristic. TFT whose thickness was 150nm exhibits a good subthreshold swing(S) of 0.72 V/decade and high on-off ratio of 1E+08. Field effect mobility, saturation effect mobility, and threshold voltage were evaluated 7.2, 5.8, 8V respectively.

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InGaZnO active layer 두께에 따른 thin-film transistor 전기적인 영향

  • U, Chang-Ho;Kim, Yeong-Lee;An, Cheol-Hyeon;Kim, Dong-Chan;Gong, Bo-Hyeon;Bae, Yeong-Suk;Seo, Dong-Gyu;Jo, Hyeong-Gyun
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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    • 2009.11a
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    • pp.5-5
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    • 2009
  • Thin-film-transistors (TFTs) that can be prepared at low temperatures have attracted much attention because of the great potential for transparent and flexible electronics. One of the mainstreams in this field is the use of organic semiconductors such as pentacene. But device performance of the organic TFTs is still limited due to low field-effect mobility and rapid degradation after exposing to air. Alternative approach is the use of amorphous oxide semiconductors as a channel. Amorphous oxide semiconductors (AOSs) based TFTs showed the fast technological development, because AOS films can be fabricated at room temperature and exhibit the possibility in application like flexible display, electronic paper, and larges solar cells. Among the various AOSs, a-IGZO has lots of advantages because it has high channel mobility, uniform surface roughness and good transparency. [1] The high mobility is attributed to the overlap of spherical s-orbital of the heavy post-transition metal cations. This study demonstrated the effect of the variation in channel thickness from 30nm to 200nm on the TFT device performance. When the thickness was increased, turn-on voltage and subthreshold swing was decreased. The a-IGZO channels and source/drain metals were deposited with shadow mask. The a-IGZO channel layer was deposited on $SiO_2$/p-Si substrates by RF magnetron sputtering, where RF power is 150W. And working pressure is 3m Torr, at $O_2/Ar$ (2/28 sccm) atmosphere. The electrodes were formed with electron-beam evaporated Ti (30 nm) and Au (70 nm) bilayer. Finally, Al (150nm) as a gate metal was thermal-evaporated. TFT devices were heat-treated in a furnace at 250 $^{\circ}C$ and nitrogen atmosphere for 1hour. The electrical properties of the TFTs were measured using a probe-station. The TFT with channel thickness of 150nm exhibits a good subthreshold swing (SS) of 0.72 V/decade and on-off ratio of $1{\times}10^8$. The field effect mobility and threshold voltage were evaluated as 7.2 and 8 V, respectively.

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A Growth and Characterization of CsPbBr3 Thin Film Grown by Thermal Chemical Vapor Deposition (열화학기상증착법을 이용한 CsPbBr3 박막 성장 및 특성 연구)

  • Ga Eun Kim;Min Jin Kim;Hyesu Ryu;Sang Hyun Lee
    • Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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    • v.30 no.2
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    • pp.71-75
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    • 2023
  • In this study, inorganic perovskite films with different compositions were grown by thermal chemical vapor deposition depending on the substrate and their optical properties were compared. Inorganic perovskite crystals were grown on SiO2/Si and c-Al2O3 substrates using CsBr and PbBr2, respectively, under the same growth conditions. Cs4PbBr6-CsPbBr3 crystallites were grown on the SiO2 with polycrystalline structure, while a CsPbBr3 (100) dominant thin film was formed on the c-Al2O3 substrate with single crystal structure. From the photoluminescence measurement, CsPbBr3 showed typical green emission centered at 534 nm with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of about 91 meV. The Cs4PbBr6-CsPbBr3 mixed structure exhibits blue-shifted emission at 523 nm with a narrow FWHM of 63 meV and a fast decay time of 6.88 ns. These results are expected to be useful for application in photoelectric devices such as displays, solar cells, and light sensors based on inorganic metal perovskites.

The Effect of Photomodulation in Human Dermal Fibroblasts (피부 섬유아세포에서 광자극의 효과)

  • Kim, Mi Na;Kwak, Taek Jong;Kang, Nae Gyu;Lee, Sang Hwa;Park, Sun Gyoo;Lee, Cheon Koo
    • Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
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    • v.41 no.4
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    • pp.325-331
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    • 2015
  • Skin is exposed to sunlight or artificial indoor light on a daily. The reached solar light on the earth surface consist of 50% visible light and 45% infrared (IR) except for ultra violet (UV). The negative effects of UV including UVB and UVA have been steadily investigated within the last decades. However, little is known about the effects of visible or IR light. In this study, we irradiated human dermal fibroblasts using light emitting diode (LED) to investigate the optimal parameter for enhancing cell growth and collagen synthesis. We found that red of 630 nm and green of 520 nm enhance the cell proliferation, but irradiation with purple and blue light exerts toxic effects. To examine the response of irradiation time and light intensity on the fibroblasts, cells were exposed to red or green light with intensities from 0.05 to $0.75mW/cm^2$. Procollagen secretion was increased of 1.4 fold by 10 min irradiation, while 30 min treatment decreased the collagen synthesis of dermal fibroblasts. Treatment with red of $0.3mW/cm^2$ and green of 0.15 and $0.3mW/cm^2$ resulted in enhancement of collagen mRNA. Lastly, we investigated the combinatorial effect of red and green light on dermal fibroblasts. The sequential irradiation of red and green light is an efficient way for the purpose of the increase in the number of fibroblasts than single light treatment. On the other hand, the exposure of red light alone was more effective method for enhancing of collagen secretion. Our study showed that specific light parameters accelerated cell proliferation, gene expression and collagen secretion on human dermal fibroblasts. In conclusion, we demonstrate that light exposure with specific parameter has beneficial effects on the function of dermal fibroblasts, and suggests the possibility of its cosmetically and clinical application.