• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.685-688
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• 2009

Surface Texturing is very important process for high cell efficiency in crystalline silicon solar cell. Anisotropic texturing with an alkali etchant was known not to be able to produce uniform surface morphology in multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si), because of its different etching rate with random crystal orientation. In order to reduce surface reflectance of mc-Si wafer, the general etching tendency was studied with HF/HN$O_3$/De-ionized Water acidic solution. And the surface structures of textured mc-Si in various HF/HN$O_3$ ratios were compared. The surface morphology and reflectance of textured silicon wafers were measured by FE-SEM and UVvisible spectrophotometer, respectively. We obtained average reflectance of $16{\sim}19$% for wavelength between 400 nm and 900 nm depending on different etching conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.455-460
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• 2016

A textured front surface is required in high efficiency silicon solar cells to reduce reflectance and to improve light trapping. Wet etching with alkaline solution is usually applied for mono crystalline silicon solar cells. However, alkali texturing method is not appropriate for multi-crystalline silicon wafers due to grain boundary of random crystallographic orientation. Accordingly, acid texturing method is generally used for multi-crystalline silicon wafers to reduce the surface reflectance. To reduce reflectivity of multi-crystalline silicon wafers, double texturing method with combination of acid and reactive ion etching is an attractive technical solution. In this paper, we have studied to optimize RIE condition by different RF power condition (100, 150, 200, 250, 300 W).

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.116-120
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• 2011

In this paper, we studied the optimization of the screen pringting method for crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication. The 156 * 156 mm2 p-type silicon wafers with $200{\mu}m$ thickness and $0.5-3{\Omega}cm$ resistivity were used after texturing, doping, and passivation. Screen printing method is a common way to make the c-Si solar cell with low-cost and high-efficiency. We studied the optimized condition for screen printing with crystalline silicon solar cell as changing the printing direction (finger line or bus bar), finger width, and mesh angle. As a result, the screen printing with finger line direction showed higher finger height and better conversion efficiency, compared with one with bus bar direction. The experiments with various finger widths and mesh angles were also carried out. The characteristics of solar cells was obtained by measuring light current-voltage, optical microscope and electroluminescence.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.299.2-299.2
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• 2013

We investigated the potassium remaining on a crystalline silicon solar cell after potassium hydroxide (KOH) etching and its effect on the lifetime of the solar cell. KOH etching is generally used to remove the saw damage caused by cutting a Si ingot; it can also be used to etch the rear side of a textured crystalline silicon solar cell before atomic layer-deposited Al2O3 growth. However, the potassium remaining after KOH etching is known to be detrimental to the efficiency of Si solar cells. In this study, we etched a crystalline silicon solar cell in three ways in order to determine the effect of the potassium remnant on the efficiency of Si solar cells. After KOH etching, KOH and tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) were used to etch the rear side of a crystalline silicon solar cell. To passivate the rear side, an Al2O3 layer was deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD). After ALD Al2O3 growth on the KOH-etched Si surface, we measured the lifetime of the solar cell by quasi steady-state photoconductance (QSSPC, Sinton WCT-120) to analyze how effectively the Al2O3 layer passivated the interface of the Al2O3 layer and the Si surface. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) was also used to measure how much potassium remained on the surface of the Si wafer and at the interface of the Al2O3 layer and the Si surface after KOH etching and wet cleaning.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics A
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• v.31A no.7
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• pp.85-94
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• 1994

A high-resolution transmission electron microscopy study of the solid phase crystallization of the amorphous silicon thin films, deposited on SiOS12T at 52$0^{\circ}C$ by low pressure chemical vapor deposition and annealed at 55$0^{\circ}C$ in a dry N$_{2}$ ambient was carried out so that the arrangement of atoms in the crystalline silicon and at the amorphous/crystalline interface of the growing grains could be understood on an atomic level. Results show that circular crystalline silicon nuclei have formed and then the grains grow to an elliptical or dendritic shape. In the interior of all the grains many twins whose{111} coherent boundaries are parallel to the long axes of the grains are observed. From this result, it is concluded that the twins enhance the preferential grain growth in the <112> direction along {111} twin planes. In addition to the twins. many defect such as intrinsic stacking faults, extrinsic stacking faults, and Shockley partial dislocations, which can be formed by the errors in the stacking sequence or by the dissociation of the perfect dislocation are found in the silicon grain. But neither frank partial dislocations which can be formed by the condensation of excess silicon atoms or vacancies and can form stacking fault nor perfect dislocations which can be formed by the plastic deformation are observed. So it is concluded that most defects in the silicon grain are formed by the errors in the stacking sequence during the crystallization process of the amorphous silicon thin films.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.03a
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• pp.108-112
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• 2012

Crystalline silicon solar cell remains the major player in the photovoltaic marketplace with 90 % of the market, despite the development of a variety of 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 photovoltaic 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 thickness of silicon wafer is, the worse bow phenomenon is induced. The bow phenomenon is observed when two or more layers of materials of 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 lower paste applications, we observed that the bow could be reduced by up to 40% of the largest value with 130 micron thickness of the wafer even though the conversion efficiency decrease of 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 paste application.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.254-255
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• 2012

Interest in nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin films has been growing because of their favorable processing conditions for certain electronic devices. In particular, there has been an increase in the use of nc-Si thin films in photovoltaics for large solar cell panels and in thin film transistors for large flat panel displays. One of the most important material properties for these device applications is the macroscopic charge-carrier mobility. Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) or nc-Si is a basic material in thin film transistors (TFTs). However, a-Si:H based devices have low carrier mobility and bias instability due to their metastable properties. The large number of trap sites and incomplete hydrogen passivation of a-Si:H film produce limited carrier transport. The basic electrical properties, including the carrier mobility and stability, of nc-Si TFTs might be superior to those of a-Si:H thin film. However, typical nc-Si thin films tend to have mobilities similar to a-Si films, although changes in the processing conditions can enhance the mobility. In polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin films, the performance of the devices is strongly influenced by the boundaries between neighboring crystalline grains. These grain boundaries limit the conductance of macroscopic regions comprised of multiple grains. In much of the work on poly-Si thin films, it was shown that the performance of TFTs was largely determined by the number and location of the grain boundaries within the channel. Hence, efforts were made to reduce the total number of grain boundaries by increasing the average grain size. However, even a small number of grain boundaries can significantly reduce the macroscopic charge carrier mobility. The nano-crystalline or polymorphous-Si development for TFT and solar cells have been employed to compensate for disadvantage inherent to a-Si and micro-crystalline silicon (${\mu}$-Si). Recently, a novel process for deposition of nano-crystralline silicon (nc-Si) thin films at room temperature was developed using neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBaCVD) with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300 eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at room temperature. In previous our experiments, we verified favorable properties of nc-Si thin films for certain electronic devices. During the formation of the nc-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. The more resent work on nc-Si thin film transistors (TFT) was done. We identified the performance of nc-Si TFT active channeal layers. The dependence of the performance of nc-Si TFT on the primary process parameters is explored. Raman, FT-IR and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to study the microstructures and the crystalline volume fraction of nc-Si films. The electric properties were investigated on Cr/SiO2/nc-Si metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.362-369
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• 2011

In this paper, optimal deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process conditions for fused quartz were experimentally determined by Taguchi method, and fused quartz-based micro cantilevers were fabricated. In addition, comparative study on Q-factors of fused quartz and silicon micro cantilevers was performed. Using a silicon layer as an etch mask for fused quartz DRIE process, different 9 flow rate conditions of $C_4F_8$, $O_2$ and He gases were tested and the optimum combination of these factors was estimated. Micro cantilevers based on fused quartz were fabricated from this optimal DRIE condition. Through conventional silicon DRIE process, single-crystalline silicon micro cantilevers whose dimensions were similar to those of quartz cantilevers were also fabricated. Mechanical Q-factors were calculated to compare intrinsic damping properties of those two materials. Resonant frequencies and Q-factors were measured for the cantilevers having fixed widths and thicknesses and different lengths. The Q-factors were in a range of 64,000 - 108,000 for fused quartz cantilevers and 31,000 - 35,000 for silicon cantilevers. The experimental results supported that fused quartz had a good intrinsic damping property compared to that of single crystalline silicon.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.138-143
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• 2007

The effects of texturing and anti-reflection coating on the reflection properties of multi-crystalline silicon solar cell have been investigated. The chemical solutions of alkaline and acidic etching solutions were used for texturing at the surface of multi-crystalline Si wafer. Experiments were performed with various temperature and time conditions in order to determine the optimized etching condition. Alkaline etching solution was found inadequate to the texturing of multi-crystalline Si due to its high reflectance of about 25%. The reflectance of Si wafer texturing with acidic etching solution showed a very low reflectance about 10%, which was attributed to the formation of homogeneous. Also, deposition of ITO anti-reflection coating reduced the reflectance of multi-crystalline si etched with acidic solution($HF+HNO_3$) to 2.6%.