• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2019

Light induced degradation is one of the major research challenges of hydrogenated amorphous silicon related thin film silicon solar cells. Amorphous silicon shows creation of metastable defect states, originating from elevated concentration of dangling bonds during light exposure. The metastable defect states work as recombination centers, and mostly affects quality of intrinsic layer in solar cells. In this paper we present results of light induced degradation in thin film silicon solar cells and discussion on physical origin, mechanism and practical solutions of light induced degradation in thin film silicon solar cells. In-situ light-soaking IV measurement techniques are presented. We also present thin film silicon material with silicon nano-quantum dots embedded within amorphous matrix, which shows superior stability during light-soaking. Our results suggest that solar cell using silicon nano-quantum dots in abosrber layer shows superior stability under light soaking, compared to the conventional amorphous silicon solar cell.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.26-30
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• 2021

The impurity concentration is a crucial parameter for semiconductor thin films. Evaluating the impurity distribution in silicon thin film is another challenge. In this study, we have investigated the doping concentration of boron in silicon thin film using time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry in dynamic mode of operation. Boron doped silicon film was grown on i) p-type silicon wafer and ii) borosilicate glass using hot wire chemical vapor deposition technique for possible applications in optoelectronic devices. Using well-tuned SIMS measurement recipe, we have detected the boron counts 101~104 along with the silicon matrix element. The secondary ion beam sputtering area, sputtering duration and mass analyser analysing duration were used as key variables for the tuning of the recipe. The quantitative analysis of counts to concentration conversion was done following standard relative sensitivity factor. The concentration of boron in silicon was determined 1017~1021 atoms/㎤. The technique will be useful for evaluating distributions of various dopants (arsenic, phosphorous, bismuth etc.) in silicon thin film efficiently.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.299-306
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• 1998

Crystallization of the amorphous silicon needs activation. Thermal energy through laser annealing, furnace annealing and rapid thermal process (RTP) has been convinced to crystallize the amorphous silicon thin film. It is expected that some other type of energy like mechanical energy can help to crystallize the amorphous silicon thin film. In this study, mechanical energy through wet blasting of silica slurry and silicon ion implantation has been applied to the amorphous silicon thin film deposited with LPCVD technique. RTP was employed for the annealing of this mechanically-damaged amorphous silicon thin film. For the characterization of the crystallized silicon thin film, XRD and Raman analysis were conducted. In this study, it is shown that the mechanical damage is effective to enhance the crystallization of amorphous silicon thin film.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.218-221
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• 2008

Bottom-gate microcrystalline silicon thin film transistors (${\mu}c$-Si:H TFTs) were fabricated on glass and transparent polyimide substrates by conventional 13.56 MHz RF plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition at $200^{\circ}C$. The deposition rate of the ${\mu}c$-Si:H film is 24 nm/min and the amorphous incubation layer near the ${\mu}c$-Si:H/silicon nitride interface is unobvious. The threshold voltage of ${\mu}c$-Si:H TFTs can be improved by $H_2$ or $NH_3$ plasma pretreatment silicon nitride film.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.401-405
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• 2017

Because silicon thin film solar cells have a high absorption coefficient in visible light, they can absorb 90% of the solar spectrum in a $1-{\mu}m$-thick layer. Silicon thin film solar cells also have high transparency and are lightweight. Therefore, they can be used for building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems. However, the contact electrode needs to be replaced for fabricating silicon thin film solar cells in BIPV systems, because most of the silicon thin film solar cells use metal electrodes that have a high reflectivity and low transmittance. In this study, we replace the conventional aluminum top electrode with a transparent aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) electrode, the band level of which matches well with that of the intrinsic layer of the silicon thin film solar cell and has high transmittance. We show that the AZO effectively replaces the top metal electrode and the bottom fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate without a noticeable degradation of the photovoltaic characteristics.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.47-52
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• 2021

Evaluating the impurity concentrations in semiconductor thin films using time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) is an effective technique. The mass interference between isotopes and matrix element in data interpretation makes the process complex. In this study, we have investigated the doping concentration of phosphorus in, phosphorus doped silicon thin film on glass using ToF-SIMS in the dynamic mode of operation. To overcome the mass interference between phosphorus and silicon isotopes, the quantitative analysis of counts to concentration conversion was done following two routes, standard relative sensitivity factor (RSF) and SIMetric software estimation. Phosphorus doped silicon thin film of 180 nm was grown on glass substrate using hot wire chemical vapor deposition technique for possible applications in optoelectronic devices. Using ToF-SIMS, the phosphorus-31 isotopes were detected in the range of 10¹~10⁴ counts. The silicon isotopes matrix element was measured from p-type silicon wafer from a separate measurement to avoid mass interference. For the both procedures, the phosphorus concentration versus depth profiles were plotted which agree with a percent difference of about 3% at 100 nm depth. The concentration of phosphorus in silicon was determined in the range of 10¹⁹~10²¹ atoms/cm³. The technique will be useful for estimating distributions of various dopants in the silicon thin film grown on glass using ToF-SIMS overcoming the mass interference between isotopes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.52-52
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• 2011

A novel deposition process for n-type nanocrystalline silicon (n-type nc-Si) thin films at room temperature has been developed by adopting the neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBa-CVD). During formation of n-type nc-Si thin film by the NBa-CVD process with silicon reflector electrode at room temperature, the energetic particles could induce enhance doping efficiency and crystalline phase in polymorphous-Si thin films without additional heating on substrate; The dark conductivity and substrate temperature of P-doped polymorphous~nano crystalline silicon thin films increased with increasing the reflector bias. The NB energy heating substrate(but lower than $80^{\circ}C$ and increase doping efficiency. This low temperature processed doped nano-crystalline can address key problem in applications from flexible display backplane thin film transistor to flexible solar cell.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.253-253
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• 2012

Low temperature SiOx film process has being required for both silicon and oxide (IGZO) based low temperature thin film transistor (TFT) for application of flexible display. In recent decades, from low density and high pressure such as capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) type plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) to the high density plasma and low pressure such as inductively coupled plasma (ICP) and electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) have been used to researching to obtain high quality silicon oxide (SiOx) thin film at low temperature. However, these plasma deposition devices have limitation of controllability of process condition because process parameters of plasma deposition such as RF power, working pressure and gas ratio influence each other on plasma conditions which non-leanly influence depositing thin film. In compared to these plasma deposition devices, neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBaCVD) has advantage of independence of control parameters. The energy of neutral beam (NB) can be controlled independently of other process conditions. In this manner, we obtained NB dependent high crystallized intrinsic and doped silicon thin film at low temperature in our another papers. We examine the properties of the low temperature processed silicon oxide thin films which are fabricated by the NBaCVD. NBaCVD deposition system consists of the internal inductively coupled plasma (ICP) antenna and the reflector. Internal ICP antenna generates high density plasma and reflector generates NB by auger recombination of ions at the surface of metal reflector. During deposition of silicon oxide thin film by using the NBaCVD process with a tungsten reflector, the energetic Neutral Beam (NB) that controlled by the reflector bias believed to help surface reaction. Electrical and structural properties of the silicon oxide are changed by the reflector bias, effectively. We measured the breakdown field and structure property of the Si oxide thin film by analysis of I-V, C-V and FTIR measurement.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.2453-2458
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• 2007

The performance of polysilicon thin film transistor (p-Si TFT) has an important role in the operation of active matrix liquid crystal displays. To fabricate the p-Si TFTs that have uniform characteristics, understanding of the recrystallization mechanism of silicon is crucial. Especially, the analysis of the transient temperature variation and the liquid-solid interface motion is required to find the mechanism. The thermal conductivity is one of the most important parameters to understand the mechanism. In this work, a KrF eximer laser beam was irradiated to amorphous silicon thin films. We measured the transient reflectivity at the wavelength of 633 nm. We carried out the numerical simulation of one dimension conduction equation so that we determined the most well-fitted thermal conductivity by comparing the numerically obtained transient reflectivity with the experimentally measured one. The experimentally determined thermal conductivity of amorphous silicon thin films is 1.5 W/mK.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.113-121
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• 2017

The researches on the silicon-based thin films are being actively carried out. The silicon-based thin films can be made as amorphous, microcrystalline and mixed phase and it is known that the optical bandgap can be controlled accordingly. They are suitable materials for the fabrication of single junction, tandem and triple junction solar cells. It can be used as a doping layer through the bonding of boron and phosphorus. The carbon and oxygen can bond with silicon to form a wide range of optical gap. Also, The optical gap of hydrogenated amorphous silicon germanium can be lower than that of silicon. By controlling the optical gaps, it is possible to fabricate multi-junction thin film silicon solar cells with high efficiencies which can be promising photovoltaic devices.