• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09b
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• pp.1091-1092
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• 2006

Silicon nitride - silicon carbide composite was developed by using an abrasive SiC powders as a raw material. The composites were prepared by mixing abrasive SiC powder with silicon, pressing and sintering at $1400^{\circ}C$ under nitrogen atmosphere in atmosphere controlled vacuum furnace. The proportion of silicon in the initial mixtures varied from 20 to 50 wt%. After sintering, crystalline phases and microstructure were characterized. All composites consisted of ${\alpha}-Si_3N_4$ and ${\beta}-Si_3N_4$ as the bonding phases in SiC matrix. Their physical and mechanical properties were also determined. It was found that the density of the obtained composites increased with an increase in the $Si_3N_4$ content formed in the reaction.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.565-569
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• 2006

Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition(PECVD) is a well established technique for the deposition of hydrogenated film of silicon nitride (SiNx:H), which is commonly used as an antireflection coating as well as passivating layer in crystalline silicon solar cell. PECVD-SiNx:H films were investigated by varying the deposition and annealing conditions to optimize for the application in silicon solar cells. By varying the gas ratio (ammonia to silane), the silicon nitride films of refractive indices 1.85 - 2.45 were obtained. The film deposited at $450^{\circ}C$ showed the best carrier lifetime through the film deposition rate was not encouraging. The film deposited with the gas ratio of 0.57 showed the best carrier lifetime after annealing at a temperature of $800^{\circ}C$. The single crystalline silicon solar cells fabricated in conventional industrial production line applying the optimized film deposition and annealing conditions on large area substrate of size $125mm{\times}125mm$ (pseudo square) was found to have the conversion efficiencies as high as 17.05 %. Low cost and high efficiency silicon solar cells fabrication sequence has also been explained in this paper.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.51-59
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• 1984

In this paper mechanical properties of reaction-bonded silicon nitride are studied with the variation of initial nitrogen partial pressure. At 1, 25$0^{\circ}C$ the amount of nitridation and the nucleation of nitride increase linearly with the nitrogen partial pressure increase. After the nitridation is completed the density of nitride and modulus of rupture at room temperature are increased with the amount of nitridation. When the partial pressure of nitrogen is 0.5 atm the specimen show the optimum properties that is the highest density of nitride and modulus of rupture. Also the microstructure of $\alpha$-matte is deveoped very well at that pressure of nitrogen which contributes to the strength development of specimen. It is shown that with proper control of initial partial pressure of nitrogen high strength silicon nitride body can be manufactured for dynamic applications.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.73-79
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• 2013

Crystalline silicon solar cells with $SiN_x/SiN_x$ and $SiN_x/SiO_x$ double layer anti-reflection coatings(ARC) were studied in this paper. Optimizing passivation effect and optical properties of $SiN_x$ and $SiO_x$ layer deposited by PECVD was performed prior to double layer application. When the refractive index (n) of silicon nitride was varied in range of 1.9~2.3, silicon wafer deposited with silicon nitride layer of 80 nm thickness and n= 2.2 showed the effective lifetime of $1,370{\mu}m$. Silicon nitride with n= 1.9 had the smallest extinction coefficient among these conditions. Silicon oxide layer with 110 nm thickness and n= 1.46 showed the extinction coefficient spectrum near to zero in the 300~1,100 nm region, similar to silicon nitride with n= 1.9. Thus silicon nitride with n= 1.9 and silicon oxide with n= 1.46 would be proper as the upper ARC layer with low extinction coefficient, and silicon nitride with n=2.2 as the lower layer with good passivation effect. As a result, the double layer AR coated silicon wafer showed lower surface reflection and so more light absorption, compared with $SiN_x$ single layer. With the completed solar cell with $SiN_x/SiN_x$ of n= 2.2/1.9 and $SiN_x/SiO_x$ of n= 2.2/1.46, the electrical characteristics was improved as ${\Delta}V_{oc}$= 3.7 mV, ${\Delta}_{sc}=0.11mA/cm^2$ and ${\Delta}V_{oc}$=5.2 mV, ${\Delta}J_{sc}=0.23mA/cm^2$, respectively. It led to the efficiency improvement as 0.1% and 0.23%.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.11-17
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• 2013

Silicon nitride($SiN_x:H$) deposited by radio frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition(RF-PECVD) is commonly used for anti-reflection coating and passivation in crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication. In this paper, characteristics of the deposited silicon nitride was studied with change of working pressure, deposition temperature, gas ratio of $NH_3$ and $SiH_4$, and RF power during deposition. The deposition rate, refractive index and effective lifetime were analyzed. The (100) p-type silicon wafers with one-side polished, $660-690{\mu}m$, and resistivity $1-10{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ were used. As a result, when the working pressure increased, the deposition rate of SiNx was increased while the effective life time for the $SiN_x$-deposited wafer was decreased. The result regarding deposition temperature, gas ratio and RF power changes would be explained in detail below. In this paper, the optimized condition in silicon nitride deposition for silicon solar cell was obtained as 1.0 Torr for the working pressure, $400^{\circ}C$ for deposition temperature, 500 W for RF power and 0.88 for $NH_3/SiH_4$ gas ratio. The silicon nitride layer deposited in this condition showed the effective life time of > $1400{\mu}s$ and the surface recombination rate of 25 cm/s. The crystalline silicon solar cell fabricated with this SiNx coating showed 18.1% conversion efficiency.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.47-53
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• 2016

Silicon nitride ($SiN_x:H$) films made by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) are generally used as antireflection layers and passivation layers on solar cells. In this study, we investigated the properties of silicon nitride ($SiN_x:H$) films made by PECVD. The passivation properties of $SiN_x:H$ are focused on by making the antireflection properties identical. To make equivalent optical properties of silicon nitride films, the refractive index and thickness of the films are fixed at 2.0 and 90 nm, respectively. This limit makes it easier to evaluate silicon nitride film as a passivation layer in realistic application situations. Next, the effects of the mixture ratio of the process gases with silane ($SiH_4$) and ammonia ($NH_3$) on the passivation qualities of silicon nitride film are evaluated. The absorption coefficient of each film was evaluated by spectrometric ellipsometry, the minority carrier lifetimes were evaluated by quasi-steady-state photo-conductance (QSSPC) measurement. The optical properties were obtained using a UV-visible spectrophotometer. The interface properties were determined by capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurement and the film components were identified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy detection (RBS) - elastic recoil detection (ERD). In hydrogen passivation, gas ratios of 1:1 and 1:3 show the best surface passivation property among the samples.

• Journal of Information Display
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.109-112
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• 2010

The solid phase compositions and dielectric properties of silicon nitride ($SiN_x$) films prepared using the plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique at a low temperature ($200^{\circ}C$) were studied. Controlling the source gas mixing ratio, R = $[N_2]/[SiH_4]$, and the plasma power successfully produced both silicon-rich and nitrogen-rich compositions in the final films. The composition parameter, X, varied from 0.83 to 1.62. Depending on the film composition, the dielectric properties of the $SiN_x$ films also varied substantially. Silicon-rich silicon nitride (SRSN) films were obtained at a low plasma power and a low R. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra of these films revealed the existence of nano-sized silicon particles even in the absence of a post-annealing process. Nitrogen-rich silicon nitride (NRSN) films were obtained at a high plasma power and a high R. These films showed a fairly high dielectric constant ($\kappa$ = 7.1) and a suppressed hysteresis window in their capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.337-341
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• 2012

Mechanochemical processing (MCP) involves several high-energy collisions of powder particles with the milling media and results in the increased reactivity/sinterability of powder. The present paper shows results of mechanochemical processing (MCP) of silicon nitride powder mixture with the relevant sintering additives. The effects of MCP were studied by structural changes of powder particles themselves as well as by the resulting sintering/densification ability. It has been found that MCP significantly enhances reactivity and sinterability of the resultant material: silicon nitride ceramics could be pressureless sintered at $1500^{\circ}C$. Nevertheless, a degree of a silicon nitride crystal lattice and powder particle destruction (amorphization) as detected by XRD studies, is limited by the specific threshold. If that value is crossed then particle's surface damage effects are prevailing thus severe evaporation overdominates mass transport at elevated temperature. It is discussed that the cross-solid interaction between particles of various chemical composition, triggered by many different factors during mechanochemical processing, including a short-range diffusion in silicon nitride particles after collisions with other types of particles plays more important role in enhanced reactivity of tested compositions than amorphization of the crystal lattice itself. Controlled deagglomeration of $Si_3N_4$ particles during the course of high-energy milling was also considered.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.561-569
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• 1988

Mixtures of very small amounts of additive, carbon and silica(about 0.46${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$) which synthesized by the hydrolysis of ethyl silicate, the molar ratio of SiO2/C was fixed to 1/10, was nitrided at 145$0^{\circ}C$. It was considered that the optimum amount of additive to promote the nitridation reaction was below 2.0wt%. By the addition of additive, the nitridation reaction was promoted and formation of $\beta$-Si3N4 was promoted at 145$0^{\circ}C$ for 1hour, but, the nitridation reaction was decreased and the ratio of $\alpha$/$\beta$ of Si3N4, was increased at 145$0^{\circ}C$ for 5 hours. The crystal phase was $\alpha$ phase and the nitridation reaction was promoted and the particle size of silicon nitride was become smaller by the addition of $\alpha$-Si3N4, but silicon nitride of whisker-like form was produced by the addition of transition elements. There was a difference in the lattice constants of $\alpha$-Si3N4, but no difference in its of $\beta$-Si3N4 according to kinds of added substance and reaction time.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.61-67
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• 2005

In this study a new growing method of silicon nitride whiskers in the inside of large pores made intentionally during the sintering was conducted. Pore size, pore vol%, and nitrogen pressure were used as experimental variables. Silicon nitride whiskers were well grown in the inside of pores with low pore vol% range from 14 to 27 but not grown with high pore vol% such as 39 and 50. On the other hand, pore size and nitrogen pressure did not have any influence on the whisker growth. Therefore the most important factor to grow silicon nitride whisker in the inside of large pores during sintering was to make pores isolated or closed.