• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.154-155
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• 2012

The promise of nano-crystalites (nc) as a technological material, for applications including display backplane, and solar cells, may ultimately depend on tailoring their behavior through doping and crystallinity. Impurities can strongly modify electronic and optical properties of bulk and nc semiconductors. Highly doped dopant also effect structural properties (both grain size, crystal fraction) of nc-Si thin film. As discussed in several literatures, P atoms or radicals have the tendency to reside on the surface of nc. The P-radical segregation on the nano-grain surfaces that called self-purification may reduce the possibility of new nucleation because of the five-coordination of P. In addition, the P doping levels of ${\sim}2{\times}10^{21}\;at/cm^3$ is the solubility limitation of P in Si; the solubility of nc thin film should be smaller. Therefore, the non-activated P tends to segregate on the grain boundaries and the surface of nc. These mechanisms could prevent new nucleation on the existing grain surface. Therefore, most researches shown that highly doped nc-thin film by using conventional PECVD deposition system tended to have low crystallinity, where the formation energy of nucleation should be higher than the nc surface in the intrinsic materials. If the deposition technology that can make highly doped and simultaneously highly crystallized nc at low temperature, it can lead processes of next generation flexible devices. Recently, we are developing a novel CVD technology with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, named as neutral beam assisted CVD (NBaCVD), which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at low temperatures. During the formation of the nc-/pm-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. In the case of phosphorous doped Si thin films, the doping efficiency also increased as increasing the reflector bias (i.e. increasing NPB energy). At 330V of reflector bias, activation energy of the doped nc-Si thin film reduced as low as 0.001 eV. This means dopants are fully occupied as substitutional site, even though the Si thin film has nano-sized grain structure. And activated dopant concentration is recorded as high as up to 1020 #/$cm^3$ at very low process temperature (＜ $80^{\circ}C$) process without any post annealing. Theoretical solubility for the higher dopant concentration in Si thin film for order of 1020 #/$cm^3$ can be done only high temperature process or post annealing over $650^{\circ}C$. In general, as decreasing the grain size, the dopant binding energy increases as ratio of 1 of diameter of grain and the dopant hardly be activated. The highly doped nc-Si thin film by low-temperature NBaCVD process had smaller average grain size under 10 nm (measured by GIWAXS, GISAXS and TEM analysis), but achieved very higher activation of phosphorous dopant; NB energy sufficiently transports its energy to doping and crystallization even though without supplying additional thermal energy. TEM image shows that incubation layer does not formed between nc-Si film and SiO2 under later and highly crystallized nc-Si film is constructed with uniformly distributed nano-grains in polymorphous tissues. The nucleation should be start at the first layer on the SiO2 later, but it hardly growth to be cone-shaped micro-size grains. The nc-grain evenly embedded pm-Si thin film can be formatted by competition of the nucleation and the crystal growing, which depend on the NPB energies. In the evaluation of the light soaking degradation of photoconductivity, while conventional intrinsic and n-type doped a-Si thin films appeared typical degradation of photoconductivity, all of the nc-Si thin films processed by the NBaCVD show only a few % of degradation of it. From FTIR and RAMAN spectra, the energetic hydrogen NB atoms passivate nano-grain boundaries during the NBaCVD process because of the high diffusivity and chemical potential of hydrogen atoms.

• Solar Energy
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.3-11
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• 1997

Because grain boundaries in polycrystalline silicon act as potential barriers and recombination centers for the photo-generated charge carriers, these defects degrade conversion effiency of solar cell. To reduce these effects of grain boundaries, we investigated various influencing factors such as thermal treatment, various grid pattern, selective wet etching for grain boundaries, buried contact metallization along grain boundaries, grid on metallic thin film. Pretreatment above $900^{\circ}C$ in $N_2$ atmosphere, gettering by $POCl_3$ and Al treatment for back surface field contributed to obtain a high quality poly-Si. To prevent carrier losses at the grain boundaries, we carried out surface treatment using Schimmel etchant. This etchant delineated grain boundaries of $10{\mu}m$ depth as well as surface texturing effect. A metal AI diffusion into grain boundaries on rear side reduced back surface recombination effects at grain boundaries. A combination of fine grid with finger spacing of 0.4mm and buried electrode along grain boundaries improved short circuit current density of solar cell. A ultra-thin Chromium layer of 20nm with transmittance of 80% reduced series resistance. This paper focused on the grain boundary effect for terrestrial applications of solar cells with low cost, large area, and high efficiency.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.116-125
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• 2018

Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is a commonly used material for the front contact layer of chalcopyrite $CuInGaSe_2$ (CIGS) based thin film solar cells since it satisfies the requisite optical and electrical properties with low cost and abundant elemental availability. Low-resistivity and high-transmission front contacts have been developed for high-performance CIGS solar cells, and nearly meet the required performance. However, the durability of the cell especially for the corrosion resistance of AZO films has not been studied intensively. In this work, AZO films were prepared on Corning glass 7059 substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering depending on the hydrogen content. The electrical and optical properties and electrochemical corrosion resistance of the AZO films were evaluated as a function of the hydrogen content. With increasing hydrogen content to 6 wt%, the crystallinity, crystal size, and surface roughness of the films increased, and the resistivity decreased with increased carrier concentration, Hall mobility, oxygen vacancies, and $Zn(OH)_2$ binding on the AZO surface. At a hydrogen content of 6 wt%, the corrosion resistance was also relatively high with less columnar morphology, shallow pore channels, and lower grain boundary angles.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.214-218
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• 2020

In this study, Mg_xZn_1-xO thin films, which can be applied not only to active layers of light-emitting devices (LEDs), such as UV-LEDs, but also to solar cells, high mobility field-effect transistors, and power semiconductor devices, are fabricated using the sol-gel method. ZnO and Mg_0.3Zn_0.7O solution synthesized by the sol-gel method and the thin film were grown by spin coating on a Si (100) substrate and sapphire substrate. The solutions are synthesized by dissolving precursor materials in 2-methoxyethanol (2-ME) solvent, and then monoethanolamine (MEA) was added to the mixed solution as a sol stabilizer. Zinc acetate dihydrate is used as a ZnO precursor, while Mg nitrate hexahydrate and Mg acetate tetrahydrate are used as an MgO precursor. Then, the optical and structural characteristics of the fabricated thin films are compared. The molar concentration of the Zn precursor in the solvent is fixed at 0.3 M, and the amount of the Mg precursor is 30% of Mg²⁺/Zn²⁺. The optical characteristics are measured using an UV-vis spectrophotometer, and the transmittance of each wavelength is measured. Structural characteristics are measured using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Composition analyses are performed using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The Mg_0.3Zn_0.7O thin film was well formed at the ratio of the Mg precursor added regardless of the type of Mg precursor, and the c-axis of the thin film was decreased, while the band gap was increased to 3.56 eV.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.56-56
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• 2018

Transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) have attracted attention due to their high electrical conductivity and optical transparency in the visible region. Consequently, TCOs have been widely used as electrode materials in various electronic devices such as flat panel displays and solar cells. Previous studies on TCOs focused on their electrical and optical performances; there have been numerous attempts to improve these properties, such as chemical doping and crystallinity enhancement. Recently, due to rapidly increasing demand for flexible electronics, the academic interest in the mechanical stability of materials has come to the fore as a major issue. In particular, long-term stability under bending is a crucial requirement for flexible electrodes; however, research on this feature is still in the nascent stage. Hydrogen-incorporated amorphous In-Sn-O (a-ITO) thin films were fabricated by introducing hydrogen gas during deposition. The hydrogen concentration in the film was determined by secondary ion mass spectrometry and was found to vary from $4.7{\times}10^{20}$ to $8.1{\times}10^{20}cm^{-3}$ with increasing $H_2$ flow rate. The mechanical stability of the a-ITO thin films dramatically improved because of hydrogen incorporation, without any observable degradation in their electrical or optical properties. With increasing hydrogen concentration, the compressive residual stress gradually decreased and the subgap absorption at around 3.1 eV was suppressed. Considering that the residual stress and subgap absorption mainly originated from defects, hydrogen may be a promising candidate for defect passivation in flexible electronics.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.55-60
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• 2018

Transparent conductive thin films (TCFs) are essential materials for solar cells, organic light-emitting diodes, and display panels. Indium tin oxide (ITO) is one of the most widely used commercial materials to create TCFs'; however, new materials that can possibly replace ITO at a lower cost and/or those possessing mechanical flexibility are urgently needed. Silver nanowire (AgNW) is one of those promising materials, as it is less expensive and possesses superior mechanical flexibility as compared to ITO. We used AgNW and sol-gel ZnO to fabricate composite thin films by spray coating. We propose two spray-coating methods: the 'metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD)/AgNW' method and the Mixture method. These two methods are expected to be commercialized for high-quality and low-cost products, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.32-36
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• 2022

AGZO thin films were deposited on glass substrates using RF magnetron sputtering system under Ar flow rates, and their structural, electrical, and optical properties were analyzed systematically. As a result of the XRD pattern, the peak of the (002) (2θ≈33.7˚) orientation was observed, and it was found to have a hexagonal wurtzite structure. The sheet resistance of Ar 5 sccm was 3.073×10² Ω/sq and showed the best electrical properties because of the improvement of mobility due to the increase of the grain size and the variation of RMS roughness. In addition, the average transmittance was more than 90% for all samples, which demonstrated good optical properties. It is expected that the TCO characteristics can be improved by controlling Ar flow rates, and this will increase the efficiency of photoelectronic devices such as OLED and solar cells.

• Transactions of the KSME C: Technology and Education
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.7-12
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• 2013

Tin oxide thin-films have been widely applied in various fields of high-technology industries due to their excellent physical and electric properties. Those applications are found in various sensors, heating elements of windshield windows, solar cells, flat panel displays as tranparent electrodes. In this study, we conducted an experiment for the deposition of $SnO_2$ on glass of 2nd Gen. size for the effective development of large-scale backplanes. As deposition temperatures or flow rates of the $SnCl_4$ as a precursor changed, the thickness of tin oxide thin-films, their sheet resistances, transmittances, and hazes varied considerably.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1993.07b
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• pp.1147-1149
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• 1993

ZnO/$SnO_2$:F bilayer films have been prepared by pyrosol deposition method to develop optimum transparent electrode for use in amorphous silicon solar cells. The solution for $SnO_2:F$ film was composed of $SnCl_4{\cdot}5H_2O,\;NH_4F,\;CH_3OH$ and HCl, and ZnO films have been deposited on the $SnO_2:F$ films by using the solution of $ZnO(CH_3COO){_2}{\cdot}2H_2O,\;H_2O\;and\;CH_3OH$. These films have been investigated the variation of electrical and optical properties under the hydrogen plasma exposure. The sheet resistance of the $SnO_2:F$ film was sharply increased and its transmittance was decreased with the blackish effect after plasma treatment. However, the ZnO/$SnO_2:F$ bilayer film was shown hydrogen plasma durability because the electrical and optical properties was almost unchanged more then 60 seconds exposure time.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.573-579
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• 2011

Highly textured Ag, Al and Al:Si back reflectors for flexible n-i-p silicon thin-film solar cells were prepared on 100-${\mu}m$-thick stainless steel substrates by DC magnetron sputtering and the influence of their surface textures on the light-scattering properties were investigated. The surface texture of the metal back reflectors was influenced by the increased grain size and by the bimodal distribution that arose due to the abnormal grain growth at elevated deposition temperatures. This can be explained by the structure zone model (SZM). With an increase in the deposition temperatures from room temperature to $500^{\circ}C$, the surface roughness of the Al:Si films increased from 11 nm to 95 nm, whereas that of the pure Ag films increased from 6 nm to 47 nm at the same deposition temperature. Although Al:Si back reflectors with larger surface feature dimensions than pure Ag can be fabricated at lower deposition temperatures due to the lower melting point and the Si impurity drag effect, they show poor total and diffuse reflectance, resulting from the low reflectivity and reflection loss on the textured surface. For a further improvement of the light-trapping efficiency in solar cells, a new type of back reflector consisting of Ag/Al:Si bilayer is suggested. The surface morphology and reflectance of this reflector are closely dependent on the Al:Si bottom layer and the Ag top layer. The relationship between the surface topography and the light-scattering properties of the bilayer back reflectors is also reported in this paper.