• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.12 no.12
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• pp.918-923
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• 2002

In this work, CdTe films were deposited on CdS/ITO/glass substrate by a close spaced sublimation (CSS) method. A $Cu_2$Te layer was deposited on the CdTe film by evaporating $Cu_2$Te powder. Then the samples were annealed for p+ ohmic contact. TEM and XRD analysis showed that $CdTe/Cu_2$Te interface exhibited different forms with various annealing temperature. A good p+ ohmic contact was achieved when the annealing temperature was between $180^{\circ}C$ to $200^{\circ}C$. Best cell efficiency of 12.34% was obtained when post annealing temperature was $200^{\circ}C$ for 5 min. Thermal stress test of the CdS/CdTe cells with carbon back contact showed that the $Cu_2$Te contact was stable at $50^{\circ}C$ in $N_2$ and was slowly degraded at $100^{\circ}C$ in $N_2$. In comparison to the conventional carbon contact, the $Cu_2$Te contact showed a better thermal stability.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.105-110
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• 2011

The doping procedure in crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication usually contains oxygen injection during drive-in process and removal of phosphorous silicate glass(PSG). In this paper, we studied the effect of oxygen injection and PSG on conversion efficiency of solar cell. The mono crystalline silicon wafers with $156{\times}156mm^2$, $200{\mu}m$, $0.5-3.0{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ and p-type were used. After etching $7{\mu}m$ of the surface to form the pyramidal structure, the P(phosphorous) was injected into silicon wafer using diffusion furnace to make the emitter layer. After then, the silicon nitride was deposited by the PECVD with 80 nm thickness and 2.1 refractive index. The silver and aluminium electrodes for front and back sheet, respectively, were formed by screen-printing method, followed by firing in 400-425-450-550-$880^{\circ}C$ five-zone temperature conditions to make the ohmic contact. Solar cells with four different types were fabricated with/without oxygen injection and PSG removal. Solar cell that injected oxygen during the drive-in process and removed PSG after doping process showed the 17.9 % conversion efficiency which is best in this study. This solar cells showed $35.5mA/cm^2$ of the current density, 632 mV of the open circuit voltage and 79.5 % of the fill factor.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.32 no.spc3
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• pp.194-198
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• 2012

Crystalline silicon solar cell remains the major player in the photovoltaic marketplace with 80% of the market, despite the development of various thin film technologies. Silicon's excellent efficiency, stability, material abundance and low toxicity have helped to maintain its position of dominance. However, the cost of silicon materials remains a major barrier to reducing the cost of silicon photovoltaics. Using the crystalline silicon wafer with thinner thickness is the promising way for cost and material reduction in the solar cell production. However, the thinner the silicon wafer is, the worse bow phenomenon is induced. The bow phenomenon is observed when two or more layers of materials with different temperature expansion coefficiencies are in contact, in this case silicon and aluminum. In this paper, the solar cells were fabricated with different thicknesses of Al layer in order to reduce the bow phenomenon. With less amount of paste applications, we observed that the bow could be reduced by up to 40% of the largest value with 120 micron thickness of the wafer even though the conversion efficiency decrease by 0.5% occurred. Since the bowed wafers lead to unacceptable yield losses during the module construction, the reduction of bow is indispensable on thin crystalline silicon solar cell. In this work, we have studied on the counterbalance between the bow and conversion efficiency and also suggest the formation of enough back surface field (BSF) with thinner Al layer application.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.55.2-55.2
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• 2010

최근 태양전지에 대한 연구가 본격적으로 진행 중인 가운데 Local back contact 태양전지에 대한 연구가 새로운 이슈로 떠오르고 있다. LBC 구조의 태양전지는 후면 passivation에 대한 최적화 공정이 가장 중요하다. 후면 passivation으로 사용되는 물질로는 $SiO_2$, SiNx, $Al_2O_3$ 등의 산화막이 대표적이다. 본 연구에서는 LBC 구조 태양전지의 후면 passivation 박막으로 사용되는 $SiO_2$ 산화막의 공정가변에 따른 박막의 특성을 비교 분석하였다. $SiO_2$ 성장은 RTP를 사용하였다. 성장 온도 $850^{\circ}C$의 온도에서 진행하였으며, 4L/min의 $O_2$분위기에서 진행하였다. 공정 시간 5분 일 때 12.5nm, 15분 일 때 21.7nm의 두께의 박막을 성장 시킬 수 있었다. Carrier lifetime 확인 결과 박막의 두께가 얇을수록 lifetime이 향상함을 확인 할 수 있었고, C-V 측정을 통한 charge 비교를 통해 두께가 얇은 박막 일수록 더 적은 positive charge를 갖고있는 것을 확인 할 수 있었으며 이를 통해 passivation 효과가 우수함을 확인 할 수 있었다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.86-86
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• 2012

The new approaches for silicon solar cell of new concept have been actively conducted. Especially, solar cells with wire array structured radial p-n junctions has attracted considerable attention due to the unique advantages of orthogonalizing the direction of light absorption and charge separation while allowing for improved light scattering and trapping. One-dimenstional semiconductor nano/micro structures should be fabricated for radial p-n junction solar cell. Most of silicon wire and/or pillar arrays have been fabricated by vapour-liquid-solid (VLS) growth because of its simple and cheap process. In the case of the VLS method has some weak points, that is, the incorporation of heavy metal catalysts into the growing silicon wire, the high temperature procedure. We have tried new approaches; one is electrochemical etching, the other is noble metal catalytic etching method to overcome those problems. In this talk, the silicon pillar formation will be characterized by investigating the parameters of the electrochemical etching process such as HF concentration ratio of electrolyte, current density, back contact material, temperature of the solution, and large pre-pattern size and pitch. In the noble metal catalytic etching processes, the effect of solution composition and thickness of metal catalyst on the etching rate and morphologies of silicon was investigated. Finally, radial p-n junction wire arrays were fabricated by spin on doping (phosphor), starting from chemical etched p-Si wire arrays. In/Ga eutectic metal was used for contact metal. The energy conversion efficiency of radial p-n junction solar cell is discussed.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.2075-2082
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• 2006

This paper presents modeling and optimization techniques for hish efficiency solar cell process on single-crystalline float zone (FZ) wafers. Among a sequence of multiple steps of fabrication, the followings are the most sensitive steps for the contact formation: 1) Emitter formation by diffusion; 2) Anti-reflection-coating (ARC) with silicon nitride using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD); 3) Screen-printing for front and back metalization; and 4) Contact formation by firing. In order to increase the performance of solar cells in terms of efficiency, the contact formation process is modeled and optimized using neural networks and genetic algorithms, respectively. This paper utilizes the design of experiments (DOE) in contact formation to reduce process time and fabrication costs. The experiments were designed by using central composite design which consists of 24 factorial design augmented by 8 axial points with three center points. After contact formation process, the efficiency of the fabricated solar cell is modeled using neural networks. Established efficiency model is then used for the analysis of the process characteristics and process optimization for more efficient solar cell fabrication.

• Solar Energy
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.23-33
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• 1997

This paper reviews the advanced solar cell structures used in space. These are the structures which incorporate the back surface field and reflectors with very shallow and lightly doped emitters. Their use in space has shown that the thinner cells are more resistive to radiation damage than the thicker ones. It has been found that the charged particles affect both the surface and bulk of the cells used in space. This causes degradation in the output power, which in effect, can be explained by the degrading diffusion length of the cells. The PERL cells showed higher BOL(beginning of life) efficiency and almost the same EOL(end of life) efficiency as structures with wrap-around contact configuration fabricated on 10 ${\Omega}cm$ resistivity substrates. This observation lead to a conclusion that, the space cells do not necessarily need to have very high BOL efficiency except in specific missions which require such.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2006

ZnO:Al(AZO) films prepared by rf magnetron sputtering on glass substrate and textured by post-deposition chemical etching were applied as front contact and back reflectors for ${\mu}c$-Si:H thin film solar cells. For the front transparent electrode contact, AZO films were prepared at various working pressures and substrate temperature and then were chemically etched in diluted HCl(1%). The front AZO films deposited at low working pressure(1 mTorr) and low temperature ($240^{\circ}C$) exhibited uniform and high transmittance ($\geq$80%) and excellent electrical properties. The solar cells were optimized in terms of optical and electrical properties to demonstrate a high short-circuit current.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.127-128
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• 2006

일반적으로 screen printing 전극은 양산용 태양전지에 많이 응용되고 있다. 이것은 공정이 진공상태 내에서 이루어지지 않으므로 비교적 간단하게 증착 가능하고, co-firing으로 인한 공정단계의 함축과, 기판의 화학적인 오염이 적으며, 시료를 용도에 따라 다양하게 선택적으로 사용할 수 있고, 많은 수량의 태양전지에 전극을 저비용으로 빠르게 형성할 수 있기에 throughput 이 높은 장점이 있다. 하지만 lithography에 의한 전극보다 저항이 높고, uniformity가 낮은 단점이 있다. 본 연구에서는 Ag 전면전극과 Al 후면전극을 형성하고 conventional furnace에서 co-firing하여 열처리조건에 따라서 전극이 최적화된 가장 낮은 저항을 갖도록 하여 단점을 개선하여 보았다.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2011

In this paper, the optimized doping condition of crystalline silicon solar cells with $156{\times}156\;mm^2$ area was studied. To optimize the drive-in temperature in the doping process, the other conditions except variable drive-in temperature were fixed. These conditions were obtained in previous studies. After etching$7\;{\mu}m$ of the surface to form the pyramidal structure, the silicon nitride deposited by the PECVD had 75~80nm thickness and 2 to 2.1 for a refractive index. The silver and aluminium electrodes for front and back sheet, respectively, were formed by screen-printing method, followed by firing in 400-425-450-550-$850^{\circ}C$ five-zone temperature conditions to make the ohmic contact. Drive-in temperature was changed in range of $830^{\circ}C$ to $890^{\circ}C$to obtain the sheet resistance $30{\sim}70\;{\Omega}/{\box}$ with $10\;\Omega}/{\box}$ intervals. Solar cell made in $890^{\circ}C$ as the drive-in temperature revealed 17.1% conversion efficiency which is best in this study. This solar cells showed $34.4\;mA/cm^2$ of the current density, 627 mV of the open circuit voltage and 79.3% of the fill factor.