• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.128.2-128.2
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• 2011

스테인레스 스틸 유연기판 위에 플라즈마 화학기상 증착법 (plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition)을 이용하여 nip 구조의 미세결정질 실리콘 박막 태양전지 (microcrystalline silicon thin film solar cell)를 제조하고 i ${\mu}c$-Si:H광 흡수층과 p ${\mu}c$-Si:H 사이에 i a-Si:H 버퍼 층을 삽입하여 i/p 계면특성을 개선하고 이에 따른 태양전지 성능특성 변화를 조사하였다. ${\mu}c$-Si:H 박막으로 이루어진 i/p 계면에서의 구조적, 전기적 결함은 태양전지 내에서 생성된 캐리어의 재결합과 shunt resistance 감소를 초래하여 개방전압 (open circuit voltage) 및 곡선 인자 (fill factor)를 감소시키는 것으로 알려졌다. 제조된 미세결정질 실리콘 박막 태양전지는 SUS/Ag/ZnO:Al/n ${\mu}c$-Si:H/i ${\mu}c$-Si:H/p ${\mu}c$-Si:H 구조로 제작되었으며 i/p 계면 사이의 i a-Si;H 버퍼층 두께를 변화시키고 이에 따른 태양전지의 특성을 조사하였다. 태양전지의 구조적, 전기적 특성 변화는 Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), UV-visible-nIR spectrometry, Photo IV와 Dark IV를 통하여 조사하였다.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.146-149
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• 2017

Si clusters generated during the plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process have a great influence on the quality of the fabricated films. In particular, in hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin films (a-Si:H) used for thin film solar cells, Si clusters are mainly responsible for light-induced degradation. In this study, we investigated the amount of clusters incorporated into thin films using a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) and specially designed cluster eliminating filters, and investigated the effect of the DC grid mesh in preventing cluster incorporation. Experimental results showed that as the applied voltage of the grid mesh, which is placed between the electrode and the QCM, decreased, the number of clusters incorporated into the film decreased. This is due to the electrostatic force from the grid mesh bias, and this method is expected to contribute to the fabrication of high-quality thin films by preventing Si cluster incorporation.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.315-315
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• 2016

The hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin film solar cells using n/Al or n/Ag/Al back reflector have low short circuit current (Jsc) due to high absorption coefficients of Al or work function difference between n-layer and the metal. In this article, we utilized aluminum doped zinc oxide (AZO) to raise the internal reflectance for the improvement of short current density (Jsc) in a-Si:H thin film solar cells. It was found that there was a slight increase in the reflectance in the long wavelength range at the process temperature of 125oC due to improved crystalline quality of the AZO back reflector. The optical band gap (Eg) and work function were affected by the temperature and so did the internal reflectance. The increased internal reflectance within the solar cell resulted in Jsc of 14.94 mA/cm2 and the efficiency of 8.84%. Jsc for the cell without back reflector was 12.29 mA/cm2.

• 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.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.39-43
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• 2023

Carrier-selective contacts (CSCs) solar cells are considerably attractive on highly efficient crystalline silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells due to their advantages of high thermal tolerance and the simple fabrication process. CSCs solar cells require a hole selective contact (HSC) layer that selectively collects only holes. In order to selectively collect holes, it must have a work function characteristic of 5.0 eV or more when contacted with n-type Si. The VO_x, NiO_x, and CuI_x thin films were fabricated and analyzed respectively to confirm their potential usage as a hole-selective contact (HSC) layer. All thin films showed characteristics of band-gap engergy > 3.0 eV, work function > 5.0 eV and minority carrier lifetime > 1.5 ms.

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

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.263-274
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• 1996

Titanium dioxide ($TiO_{2}$) film has been widely used as anti-reflection coating for solar cells but not as masking oxide for metallisation and diffusion of impurities. In this paper we have investigated the properties of $TiO_{2}$ for possible incorporation into solar cell processing sequence. Thus the use of a spray deposition system to form the $TiO_{2}$ film and the characterisation of this film to ascertain its suitability to solar cell processing. The spray-on $TiO_{2}$ film was found to be resistant to all the chemicals used in conjunction with solar cell processing. The high temperature anealing (in oxygen ambient) of the spray-on $TiO_{2}$ film resulted in an increased refractive index, which indicated the growth of an underlying thin film of $SiO_{2}$ film for the passivation of silicon surface which would reduce the recombination activities of the fabricated device. Most importantly, the successful incorporation of the $TiO{2}$ film will lead to the reduction of the many high temperature processing steps of solar cell to only one.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.161-166
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• 2007

Photovoltaic (PV) technology permits the transformation of solar light directly into electricity. For the last five years, the photovoltaic sector has experienced one of the highest growth rates worldwide (over 30% in 2006) and for the next 20 years, the average production growth rate is estimated to be between 27% and 34% annually. Currently the cost of electricity produced using photovoltaic technology is above that for traditional energy sources, but this is expected to fall with technological progress and more efficient production processes. A large scale production of solar grade silicon material of high purity could supply the world demand at a reasonably lower cost. A shift from crystalline silicon to thin film is expected in the future. The technical limit for the conversion efficiency is about 30%. It is assumed that in 2030 thin films will have a major market share (90%) and the share of crystalline cells will have decreased to 10%. Our research at Sungkyunkwan University of South Korea is confined to crystalline silicon solar cell technology. We aim to develop a technology for low cost production of high efficiency silicon solar cell. We have successfully fabricated silicon solar cells of efficiency more than 16% starting with multicrystalline wafers and that of efficiency more than 17% on single crystalline wafers with screen printing metallization. The process of transformation from the first generation to second generation solar cell should be geared up with the entry of new approaches but still silicon seems to remain as the major material for solar cells for many years to come. Local barriers to the implementation of this technology may also keep continuing up to year 2010 and by that time the cost of the solar cell generated power is expected to be 60 cent per watt. Photovoltaic source could establish itself as a clean and sustainable energy alternate to the ever depleting and polluting non-renewable energy resource.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.30 no.10
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• pp.566-572
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• 2020

In the recent years, thin film solar cells (TFSCs) have emerged as a viable replacement for crystalline silicon solar cells and offer a variety of choices, particularly in terms of synthesis processes and substrates (rigid or flexible, metal or insulator). Among the thin-film absorber materials, SnS has great potential for the manufacturing of low-cost TFSCs due to its suitable optical and electrical properties, non-toxic nature, and earth abundancy. However, the efficiency of SnS-based solar cells is found to be in the range of 1 ~ 4 % and remains far below those of CdTe-, CIGS-, and CZTSSe-based TFSCs. Aside from the improvement in the physical properties of absorber layer, enormous efforts have been focused on the development of suitable buffer layer for SnS-based solar cells. Herein, we investigate the device performance of SnS-based TFSCs by introducing double buffer layers, in which CdS is applied as first buffer layer and ZnMgO films is employed as second buffer layer. The effect of the composition ratio (Mg/(Mg+Zn)) of RF sputtered ZnMgO films on the device performance is studied. The structural and optical properties of ZnMgO films with various Mg/(Mg+Zn) ratios are also analyzed systemically. The fabricated SnS-based TFSCs with device structure of SLG/Mo/SnS/CdS/ZnMgO/AZO/Al exhibit a highest cell efficiency of 1.84 % along with open-circuit voltage of 0.302 V, short-circuit current density of 13.55 mA cm^-2, and fill factor of 0.45 with an optimum Mg/(Mg + Zn) ratio of 0.02.