• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.204-205
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• 2011

In thin film silicon solar cells, p-i-n structure is adopted instead of p/n junction structure as in wafer-based Si solar cells. PECVD is a most widely used thin film deposition process for a-Si:H or ${\mu}c$-Si:H solar cells. For best performance of thin film silicon solar cell, the dopant profiles at p/i and i/n interfaces need to be as sharp as possible. The sharpness of dopant profiles can easily achieved when using multi-chamber PECVD equipment, in which each layer is deposited in separate chamber. However, in a single-chamber PECVD system, doped and intrinsic layers are deposited in one plasma chamber, which inevitably impedes sharp dopant profiles at the interfaces due to the contamination from previous deposition process. The cross-contamination between layers is a serious drawback of a single-chamber PECVD system in spite of the advantage of lower initial investment cost for the equipment. In order to resolve the cross-contamination problem in single-chamber PECVD systems, flushing method of the chamber with NH3 gas or water vapor after doped layer deposition process has been used. In this study, a new plasma process to solve the cross-contamination problem in a single-chamber PECVD system was suggested. A single-chamber VHF-PECVD system was used for superstrate type p-i-n a-Si:H solar cell manufacturing on Asahi-type U FTO glass. A 80 MHz and 20 watts of pulsed RF power was applied to the parallel plate RF cathode at the frequency of 10 kHz and 80% duty ratio. A mixture gas of Ar, H2 and SiH4 was used for i-layer deposition and the deposition pressure was 0.4 Torr. For p and n layer deposition, B2H6 and PH3 was used as doping gas, respectively. The deposition temperature was $250^{\circ}C$ and the total p-i-n layer thickness was about $3500{\AA}$. In order to remove the deposited B inside of the vacuum chamber during p-layer deposition, a high pulsed RF power of about 80 W was applied right after p-layer deposition without SiH4 gas, which is followed by i-layer and n-layer deposition. Finally, Ag was deposited as top electrode. The best initial solar cell efficiency of 9.5 % for test cell area of 0.2 $cm^2$ could be achieved by applying the in-situ plasma cleaning method. The dependence on RF power and treatment time was investigated along with the SIMS analysis of the p-i interface for boron profiles.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.8 no.2 s.23
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• pp.15-27
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to improve the performance of Polymer electrolyte fuel cell(PEMFC) by studying the channel dimension of bipolar plates using commercial CFD program 'Fluent'. Simulations are done ranging from 0.5 to 3.0mm for different size in order to find the channel size which shoves the highst hydrogen consumption. The results showed that the smaller channel width, land width, channel depth, the higher hydrogen consumption in anode. When channel width is increased, the pressure drop in channel is decreased because total channel length Is decreased, and when land width is increased, the net hydrogen consumption is decreased because hydrogen is diffused under the land width. It is also found that the influence of hydrogen consumption is larger at different channel width than it at different land width. The change of hydrogen consumption with different channel depth isn't as large as it with different channel width, but channel depth has to be small as can as it does because it has influence on the volume of bipolar plates. however the hydrogen utilization among the channel sizes more than 1.0mm which can be machined in reality is the most at channel width 1.0, land width 1.0, channel depth 0.5mm and considered as optimum channel size. The fuel cell combined with 2cm${\times}$2cm diagonal or serpentine type flow field and MEA(Membrane Electrode Assembly) is tested using 100W PEMFC test station to confirm that the channel size studied in simulation. The results showed that diagonal and serpentine flow field have similarly high OCV and current density of diagonal (low field is higher($2-40mA/m^2$) than that of serpentine flow field under 0.6 voltage, but the current density of serpentine type has higher performance($5-10mA/m^2$) than that of diagonal flow field under 0.7-0.8 voltage.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.877-887
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• 1996

The ideal membranes for membrane-covered oxygen probes system should be selectively permeable for oxygen and chemically inert, and have good mechanical strength. Polysulfone(PSf) was selected to develop the membrane for membrane-covered oxygen electrodes system. PSf membranes have properties such as good reproducibility, good mechanical strength, chemical inertness, and high heat resistance. PSf membranes were cast from polymer solution on the glass plate at constant temperature, and casting solvents used were tetrahydrofuran(THF), methylene chloride, and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone(NMP). Tricresyl phosphate(TCP) as plasicizer was added to PSf to increase the softness of membrane. The permeation characteristics were observed for pure oxygen and nitrogen through pure PSf membranes by variable volume method and membrane-covered electrode system. The permeability coefficients of oxygen and nitrogen measured by variable volume method were slightly decreased with increasing of upstream pressure. The permeation properties of PSf membrane using methylene choride as casting solvent were not affected by the PSf amount of polymer solution. The permeability coefficients of oxygen and nitrogen for PSf membrane containing TCP were very slightly lower than those for pure PSf membrane, but ideal separation factors were slightly higher. The flexibility of PSf membrane containing 2wt% TCP was better than that of pure PSf membrane. It was expected that this increase in flexibility would solve the difficulty of fixing the membrane to the cathode. The membrane-covered oxygen probes system was composed of anode, cathode and electrolyte. The type of the anode was Ag/AgCl half-cell, that of cathode was Ag, and the electrolyte was 4N KCl solution. The result of sampled current voltametry for PSf membrane showed the plateu region at -0.3V~-1.0V. The correlation coefficient of oxygen partial pressure versus current for PSf membrane was relatively high, 0.99949. It was concluded that PSf membrane was the good candidate for the membrane-covered oxygen probes system.