• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2013.08a
• /
• pp.300.2-300.2
• /
• 2013

Periodically shaped pillar-arrays and hole-arrays were fabricated on a Si wafer. Geometric features are similar in a periodic length of 4 ${\mu}m$ and a depth of 2 ${\mu}m$. For the hole-array patterns, positive PR processes were performed. UV exposed PR patterns were removed during a developing process to leave shapes of inversely replicated from a glass photomask. Meanwhile, negative PR processes were taken for the pillar-array patterns. UV exposed PR patterns were remained on a Si substrate having a same feature of patterns of a glass photomask. For an electrical aspect, a pillar structure has a short carrier-collection length resulting in the improved open-circuit voltage of 609 mV from 587 mV of a planar device. An improved performance may be achieved to reduce recombination loss along the patterning surface.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
• /
• v.36 no.11
• /
• pp.1135-1140
• /
• 2012

Two-step metallization processes have been proposed to achieve high-efficiency silicon solar cells, where the front-side grids are formed by silver plating after the formation of a nickel seed layer with a mask. Because the conventional mask patterning process is performed by an expensive selective printing method using either UV resist or phase change ink, however, the combination of a simple coating and laser-selective ablation processes is proposed in this study as an alternative means. As a masking material, the solar cell wafer was coated with either inexpensive wax having a low melting temperature or a fluorocarbon solution, and then, an electrode image was patterned by selectively removing the masking material using the laser. It was found that the fluorocarbon coating was not only superior to the wax coating in terms of pattern uniformity but it also increased the efficiency of the solar cell by 0.16%, as confirmed by statistical f and t tests.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.26 no.10
• /
• pp.754-759
• /
• 2013

Aluminum oxide($Al_2O_3$) film deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) is known to supply excellent surface passivation properties on crystalline Si surfaces. Since $Al_2O_3$ has fixed negative charge, it forms effective surface passivation by field effect passivation on the rear side in p-type silicon solar cell. However, $Al_2O_3$ layer formed by ALD process needs very long process time, which is not applicable in mass production of silicon solar cells. In this paper, plasma-assisted ALD(PA-ALD) was applied to form $Al_2O_3$ to reduce the process time. $Al_2O_3$ synthesized by ALD on c-Si (100) wafers contains a very thin interfacial $SiO_2$ layer, which was confirmed by FTIR and TEM. To improve passivation quality of $Al_2O_3$ layer, the deposition temperature was changed in range of $150{\sim}350^{\circ}C$, then the annealing temperature and time were varied. As a result, the silicon wafer with aluminum oxide film formed in $250^{\circ}C$, $400^{\circ}C$ and 10 min for the deposition temperature, the annealing temperature and time, respectively, showed the best lifetime of 1.6ms. We also observed blistering with nanometer size during firing of $Al_2O_3$ deposited on p-type silicon.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
• /
• v.20 no.12
• /
• pp.649-653
• /
• 2010

In this paper, double texturization of multi crystalline silicon solar cells was studied with laser and reactive ion etching (RIE). In the case of multi crystalline silicon wafers, chemical etching has problems in producing a uniform surface texture. Thus various etching methods such as laser and dry texturization have been studied for multi crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, laser texturization with an Nd:$YVO_4$ green laser was performed first to get the proper hole spacing and $300{\mu}m$ was found to be the most proper value. Laser texturization on crystalline silicon wafers was followed by damage removal in acid solution and RIE to achieve double texturization. This study showed that double texturization on multi crystalline silicon wafers with laser firing and RIE resulted in lower reflectance, higher quantum yield and better efficiency than that process without RIE. However, RIE formed sharp structures on the silicon wafer surfaces, which resulted in 0.8% decrease of fill factor at solar cell characterization. While chemical etching makes it difficult to obtain a uniform surface texture for multi crystalline silicon solar cells, the process of double texturization with laser and RIE yields a uniform surface structure, diminished reflectance, and improved efficiency. This finding lays the foundation for the study of low-cost, high efficiency multi crystalline silicon solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.179-183
• /
• 2008

Employing screen printing technology, aluminum is applied to the back side of the n-type silicon wafer to see the effect of the heat treatment parameters on the Voc of the solar cell, Heat treatment at $850^{\circ}C$ produces the highest Voc among various heat treatment conditions. Heat treatment at the temperatures higher than $850^{\circ}C$ results in lower Voc, which is due to the destruction of the Al-Si alloy emitter layer. The destruction of Al-Si layer observed to be caused by the vigorous movement of silicon atoms toward aluminum layer during the heat treatment.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.140-143
• /
• 2013

Lowering surface reflectance of silicon wafer by texturization is one of the most important processes to improve the efficiency of silicon solar cells. Generally, the texturing of crystalline silicon was carried out using alkaline solution. The average reflectance of this method was 11% at the wavelength between 400 and 1,000 nm. In this study, the wafers were first texturing by NaOH solution at $80^{\circ}C$ for 35 min. Then the wafers were texturing by $SF_6$ and $O_2$ plasma in RIE (Reactive Ion Etching). The average reflectance of two step texturing was reduced to below 5% at the wavelength between 400 and 1,000 nm.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
• /
• v.52 no.10
• /
• pp.447-450
• /
• 2003

This paper presents a process optimization of antireflection (AR) coating on crystalline Si solar cells. Theoretical and experimental investigations were performed on a double-layer AR (DLAR) coating of MgF$_2$/CeO$_2$. We investigated CeO$_2$ films as an AR layer because they have a proper refractive index of 2.46 and demonstrate the same lattice constant as Si substrate. RF sputter grown CeO$_2$ film showed strong dependence on a deposition temperature. The CeO$_2$ deposited at 40$0^{\circ}C$ exhibited a strong (111) preferred orientation and the lowest surface roughness of 6.87 $\AA$. Refractive index of MgF$_2$ film was measured as 1.386 for the most of growth temperature. An optimized DLAR coating showed a reflectance as low as 2.04% in the wavelengths ranged from 0.4${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ to 1.1${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$. We achieved the efficiencies of solar cells greater than 15% with 3.12% improvement with DLAR coatings. Further details on MgF$_2$, CeO$_2$ films, and cell fabrication parameters are presented in this paper.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 1999.05a
• /
• pp.593-596
• /
• 1999

This paper presents a process optimization of antireflectiun (AR) coating on crystalline Si solar cells. Theoretical and experimental investigations were performed on a doble-layer AR(DLAR) coating of MgF$_2$/CeO$_2$, We investigated CeO$_2$ films as an All layer because they hale a proper refractive index of 2.46 and demonstrate the same lattice constant as Si substrate. RF sputter grown CeO$_2$ film showed strong dependence on a deposition temperature. The CeO$_2$ film deposited at 400 $^{\circ}C$ exhibited a strong (111) preferred orientation and the lowest surface roughness of 6.87 $\AA$. Refractive index of MgF$_2$ film was measured as 1.386 for the most of growth temperature. An optimized DLAR coating showed a reflectance as low as 2.04 % in the wavelengths ranged from 0.4 7m to 1.1 7m. We achieved the efficiencies of solar cells greater than 15% with 3.12 % improvement with DLAR coatings . Further details on MgF$_2$, CeO$_2$ films, and cell fabrication Parameters are presented in this paper.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.156-159
• /
• 2011

SiNx:H films have been widely used for anti-reflection coatings and passivation for crystalline silicon solar cells. In this study, SiNx:H films were deposited using high frequency (13.56 MHz) direct plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, and the optical and passivation properties were investigated. The radio frequency power, the spacing between the showerhead and wafer, the $NH_3/SiH_4$ ratio, the total gas flow, and the $N_2$ gas flow were changed over certain ranges for the film deposition. The thickness uniformity, the refractive index, and the minority carrier lifetime were then measured in order to study the properties of the film. The optimal deposition conditions for application to crystalline Si solar cells are determined from the results of this study.

• Resources Recycling
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.60-68
• /
• 2012

Silicon wafer for making semiconductor devices and solar cell is used in the semiconductor and solar industry, respectively. Silicon wafer is produced by cutting with silicon ingot and sludge contains silicon occurs from cutting process. Generation of silicon sludge is increasing on developing all industry sectors which have need of semiconductor device. These days it has been widely studied for the recycling technologies of the silicon sludge from view points of economy and efficiency. In this paper, patents and paper on the recycling technologies of the silicon sludge were analyzed. The range of search was limited in the open patents of USA (US), European Union (EU), Japan (JP), Korea (KR) and SCI journals from 1982 to 2011. Patents and journals were collected using key-words searching and filtered by filtering criteria. The trends of the patents and journals was analyzed by the years, countries, companies, and technologies.