• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.119-130
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• 1994

To deposit silicon on borosilicate glass substrates, 18 different substrate combinations were investigated because of the difficulty of direct deposition of silicon. Sucessful results were obtained from Al-and Mg-treated glass and furnace annealed sputtered silicon deposited glass substrates. A continuous silicon thin film on a large area substrates was obtained in the temperatures ranges from $420^{\circ}C to 520^{\circ}C$. These thin films might be applied to lower the cost of solar cells and solar cell modules.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.245-252
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• 2009

Changes in the surface morphology and light scattering of textured Al doped ZnO thin films on glass substrates prepared by rf magnetron sputtering were investigated. As-deposited ZnO:Al films show a high transmittance of above 80% in the visible range and a low electrical resistivity of $4.5{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$. The surface morphology of textured ZnO:Al films are closely dependent on the deposition parameters of heater temperature, working pressure, and etching time in the etching process. The optimized surface morphology with a crater shape is obtained at a heater temperature of $350^{\circ}C$, working pressure of 0.5 mtorr, and etching time of 45 seconds. The optical properties of light transmittance, haze, and angular distribution function (ADF) are significantly affected by the resulting surface morphologies of textured films. The film surfaces, having uniformly size-distributed craters, represent good light scattering properties of high haze and ADF values. Compared with commercial Asahi U ($SnO_2$:F) substrates, the suitability of textured ZnO:Al films as front electrode material for amorphous silicon thin film solar cells is also estimated with respect to electrical and optical properties.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.36-36
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• 2010

Currently, there are several newly developed energy resources for the future to replace petroleum resources such as hydrogen fuel cell, solar cell, wind power, and etc. Among them, solar cell has attracted a worldwide concern, because it has an enormous amount of resources. In general, a study of solar cells can be classified in to an area of bulk type and thin-film type. Inorganic solar cells based on silicon have been tremendously developed in technology and efficiency. However, since there are many lithographic steps, high processing temperature approximately $1000^{\circ}C$, and expensive raw materials, a manufacturing cost of device are nearly reaching a limit. Contrary to those disadvantages, organic solar cells can be manufactured at room temperature. Also, it has many advantages such as a low cost, easy fabrication of thin film, and possible manufacture to a large size. Because it can be made to be flexible, research and development on solar cells are actively in progress for the next generation. ever though an efficiency of the organic solar cell is low compared to that of inorganic one, a continuous study is needed. In this paper, we report optimal device structure obtained by a program simulation for design and development of highly efficient organic photovoltaic cells. we have also compared simulated results to experimental ones.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.254-261
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• 2010

Polycrystalline silicon (pc-Si) films are fabricated and characterized for application to pc-Si thin film solar cells as a seed layer. The amorphous silicon films are crystallized by the aluminum-induced layer exchange (ALILE) process with a structure of glass/Al/$Al_2O_3$/a-Si using various thicknesses of $Al_2O_3$ layers. In order to investigate the effects of the oxide layer on the crystallization of the amorphous silicon films, such as the crystalline film detects and the crystal grain size, the $Al_2O_3$ layer thickness arc varied from native oxide to 50 nm. As the results, the defects of the poly crystalline films are increased with the increase of $Al_2O_3$ layer thickness, whereas the grain size and crystallinity are decreased. In this experiments, obtained the average pc-Si sub-grain size was about $10\;{\mu}m$ at relatively thin $Al_2O_3$ layer thickness (${\leq}$ 16 nm). The preferential orientation of pc-Si sub-grain was <111>.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.97-102
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• 2019

Bifacial and semitransparent hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film solar cells in p-i-n configuration were prepared with front and rear transparent conducting oxide (TCO) electrodes using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition method. Fluorine-doped tin oxide and tin-doped indium oxide films were used as front and rear TCO contacts, respectively. Film thickness of intrinsic a-Si:H absorber layers were controlled from 150 nm to 450 nm by changing deposition time. The dependence of performance characteristics of solar cells on the front and rear illumination direction were investigated. For front illumination, gradual increase in the short-circuit current density (J_SC) from 10.59 mA/㎠ to 14.19 mA/㎠ was obtained, whereas slight decreases from 0.83 V to 0.81 V for the open-circuit voltage (V_OC) and from 68.43% to 65.75% for fill factor (FF) were observed. The average optical transmittance in the wavelength region of 380 ~ 780 nm of the solar cells decreased gradually from 22.76% to 15.67% as the absorber thickness was changed from 150 nm to 450 nm. In case of the solar cells under rear illumination condition, the J_SC increased from 10.81 to 12.64 mA/㎠ and the FF deceased from 66.63% to 61.85%, while the V_OC values were maintained at 0.80 V with increasing the absorber thickness from 150 nm to 450 nm. By optimizing the deposition parameters, a high-quality bifacial and semitransparent a-Si:H solar cell with 350 nm-thick i-a-Si:H absorber layer exhibited the conversion efficiencies of 7.69% for front illumination and 6.40% for rear illumination, and average visible optical transmittance of 17.20%.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.890-895
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• 1999

The recent important issue in solar cell fabrication is to adopt thin film silicon solar cells on cheap substrates. However, thin cells demand new grid design concept that all the contacts(to the emitter and base) be located on the front surface. Hence, the aim of the investigation presented in this paper was to determine the potential and the basic limitation of the design. With this concept, an interdigitated front grid structure was realized and cells were fabricated through a set of photolithography processes. Confirmed efficiencies of up to 11.5% were achieved on bonded SOI wafers with a cell thickness of 50$\mu\textrm{m}$ in the case of finger spacing more than $\mu\textrm{m}$ and a base width of 35$\mu\textrm{m}$. It was also shown from the results that the design rules for optimizing the base fraction and reducing the shadowing fraction are noted as an important technique to realize high-efficiency thin silicon solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.193-193
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• 2012

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 the most widely used thin film deposition process for a-Si:H or ${\mu}c$-Si:H solar cells. Single-chamber PECVD system for a-Si:H solar cell manufacturing has the advantage of lower initial investment and maintenance cost for the equipment. However, in 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 single-chamber PECVD system. In this study, a new plasma process to solve the cross-contamination problem in a single-chamber PECVD system was suggested. In order to remove the deposited B inside of the plasma chamber during p-layer deposition, a high RF power was applied right after p-layer deposition with SiH4 gas off, which is then followed by i-layer, n-layer, and Ag top-electrode deposition without vacuum break. In addition to the p-i interface control, various interface control techniques such as FTO-glass pre-annealing in O2 environment to further reduce sheet resistance of FTO-glass, thin layer of TiO2 deposition to prevent H2 plasma reduction of FTO layer, and hydrogen plasma treatment prior to n-layer deposition, etc. were developed. The best initial solar cell efficiency using single-chamber PECVD system of 10.5% for test cell area of 0.2 $cm^2$ could be achieved by adopting various interface control methods.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2001.11b
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• pp.525-528
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• 2001

ZnO:Al thin film can be used as a transparent conducting oxide(TCO) which has low electric resistivity and high optical transmittance for the front electrode of amorphous silicon solar cells and display devices. This study of electrical, crystallographic and optical properties of Al doped ZnO thin films prepared by Facing Targets Sputtering(FTS), where strong internal magnets were contained in target holders to confine the plasma between the targets, is described. Optimal transmittance and resistivity was obtained by controlling flow rate of $O_2$ gas and substrate temperature. When the $O_2$ gas rate of 0.3 and substrate temperature $200^{\circ}C$, ZnO:Al thin film had strongly oriented c-axis and lower resistivity( < $10^{-4}{\Omega}-cm$ ).

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 1999.07a
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• pp.63-63
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• 1999

The stability of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films under the light soaking are very important since the applications of a-Si:H films are solar cells, color sensors, photosensors, and thin film transistors(TFTs). We found the changes of the electric conductivity and the conductivity activation energy (Ea) of a-Si:H films by argon radical annealing. The deposition rate of a-Si:H films depends on the argon radical annealing time. The optical band gap and the hydrogen contents in the a-Si:H films are changes along the argon radical annealing time. We will discuss the microscopic processes of argon radical annealing in a-si:H films.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.173-176
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• 2014

We have investigated the seed layer formation of front side contact using the inkjet printing process. Conductive silver ink was printed on textured Si wafers with 80 nm thick $SiN_x$ anti reflection coating (ARC) layers and thickened by light induced plating (LIP). The inkjet printable sliver inks were specifically formulated for inkjet printing on these substrates. Also, a novel method to prepare nano-sized glass frits by the sol-gel process with particle sizes around 5 nm is presented. Furthermore, dispersion stability of the formulated ink was measured using a Turbiscan. By implementing these glass frits, it was found that a continuous and uniform seed layer with a line width of $40{\mu}m$ could be formed by a inkjet printing process. We also investigated the contact resistance between the front contact and emitter using the transfer length model (TLM). On an emitter with the sheet resistance of $60{\Omega}/sq$, a specific contact resistance (${\rho}_c$) below $10m{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$ could be achieved at a peak firing temperature around $700^{\circ}C$. In addition, the correlation between the contact resistance and interface microstructures were studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). We found that the added glass particles act as a very effective fire through agent, and Ag crystallites are formed along the interface glass layer.