• Clean Technology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2012

Cleaning procedure of solar silicon wafer, following ingot sawing process in solar cell production is studied. Types of solar silicon wafer can be divided into monocrystalline or multicrystalline, and slurry sawn wafer or diamond sawn wafer according to the ingot growing methods and the sawing methods, respectively. Wafer surface and contaminants can vary with these methods. The characterisitics of contaminants and wafer surface are investigated for each cleaning substrate, and appropriate cleaning agents are developed. Physical properties and cleaning ability of the cleaning agents are evaluated in order to verify the application in the industry. The wafers cleaned with the cleaning agents do not show any residual contaminants when analyzed by XPS and regular patterns are formed after texturization. Furthermore, the cleaning agents are applied in the production industry, which shows superior cleaning results compared to the existing cleaning agents.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.182-188
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• 2013

Using a ceramic target ZnO:In with In doping concentration of 2%, hetero-junctions of n-ZnO:In/p-Si and p-ZnO:(In, N)/n-Si were fabricated by depositing Indium doped n - type ZnO (ZnO:In or IZO) and Indium-nitrogen co-doped p - type ZnO (ZnO:(In, N)) films on wafers of p-Si (100) and n-Si (100) by DC magnetron sputtering, respectively. These films with the best electrical and optical properties were then obtained. The micro-structural, optical and electrical properties of the n-type and p-type semiconductor thinfilms were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), RBS, UV-vis; four-point probe resistance and room-temperature Hall effect measurements, respectively. Typical rectifying behaviors of p-n junction were observed by the current-voltage (I-V) measurement. It shows fairly good rectifying behavior with the fact that the ideality factor and the saturation current of diode are n=11.5, Is=1.5108.10-7 (A) for n-ZnO:In/p-Si hetero-jucntion; n=10.14, Is=3.2689.10-5 (A) for p-ZnO:(In, N)/n-Si, respectively. These results demonstrated the formation of a diode between n-type thin film and p-Si, as well as between p-type thin film and n-Si..

• Korean Journal of Crystallography
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.53-63
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• 1998

The Cd1-xZnxS thin films were grown on the Si(100) wafers by a hot wall epitaxy method (HWE). the source and substrate temperature are 600℃ and 440℃, respectively. The crystalline structure of epilayers was investigated by double crystal X-ray diffraction (DCXD). Hall effect on the sample was measured by the van der Pauw method and the carrier density and mobility dependence of Hall characteristics on temperature was also studied. In order to explore the applicability as a photoconductive cell, we measured the sensitivity (γ), the ratio of photocurrent to darkcurrent (pc/dc), maximum allowable power dissipation (MAPD), spectral response and response time. The results indicated that the best photoconductive characteristic were observed in the Cd0.53Zn0.47S samples annealed in Cu vapor comparing with in Cd, Se, air and vacuum vapour. Then we obtained the sensitivity of 0.99, the value of pc/dc of 1.65 × 107, the MAPD of 338mW, and the rise and decay time of 9.7 ms and 9.3 ms, respectively.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.334-340
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• 2011

Saw wires have been widely used in industries to slice silicon (Si) ingots into thin wafers for semiconductor fabrication. This study investigated the microstructural and mechanical properties, such as abrasive wear and tensile properties, of a saw wire sample of 0.84 wt.% carbon steel with a 120 ${\mu}M$ diameter. The samples were subjected to heat treatment at different linear velocities of the wire during the patenting process and two different wear tests were performed, 2-body abrasive wear (grinding) and 3-body abrasive wear (rolling wear) tests. With an increasing linear velocity of the wire, the tensile strength and microhardness of the samples increased, whereas the interlamellar spacing in a pearlite structure decreased. The wear properties from the grinding and rolling wear tests exhibited an opposite tendency. The weight loss resulting from grinding was mainly affected by the tensile strength and microhardness, while the diameter loss obtained from rolling wear was affected by elongation or ductility of the samples. This result demonstrates that the wear mechanism in the 3-body wear test is much different from that for the 2-body abrasive wear test. The ultra-high tensile strength of the saw wire produced by the drawing process was attributed to the pearlite microstructure with very small interlamellar spacing as well as the high density of dislocation.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.204-210
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• 2008

$1.5\;{\mu}m$-thick copper films deposited on silicon wafers were successfully bonded at $415^{\circ}C$/25 kN for 40 minutes in a thermo-compression bonding method that did not involve a pre-cleaning or pre-annealing process. The original copper bonding interface disappeared and showed a homogeneous microstructure with few voids at the original bonding interface. Quantitative interfacial adhesion energies were greater than $10.4\;J/m^2$ as measured via a four-point bending test. Post-bonding annealing at a temperature that was less than $300^{\circ}C$ had only a slight effect on the bonding energy, whereas an oxygen environment significantly deteriorated the bonding energy over $400^{\circ}C$. This was most likely due to the fast growth of brittle interfacial oxides. Therefore, the annealing environment and temperature conditions greatly affect the interfacial bonding energy and reliability in Cu-Cu bonded wafer stacks.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.314-318
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• 2010

We fabricated a plasma texturing for multi-crystalline silicon cells using reactive ion etching (RIE). Multi-crystalline Si cells have not benefited from the cost-effective wet-chemical texturing processes that reduce front surface reflectance on single-crystal wafers. Elimination of plasma damage has been achieved while keeping front reflectance to extremely low levels. We will discuss reflectance, quantum efficiency and conversion efficiency for multi-crystalline Si solar cell by each RIE process conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.141-147
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• 2010

In this study, high-k oxide films like $Al_2O_3$, $TiO_2$, $HfO_2$ were deposited on Si, $SiO_2$/Si, GaAs wafers, and then the thermal conductivity was measured by using thermo-reflectance method which utilizes the reflectance variation of the film surface produced by the periodic temperature variation. The result shows that high-k oxide films with 50 nm thickness have high thermal conductivity of 0.80~1.29 W/(mK). Therefore, effectively dissipate the heat generated in the electric circuit such as CMOS memory device, and the heat transfer changes according to the micro grain size.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.16-20
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• 2015

In this study, in order to improve the efficiency of n-type monocrystalline solar cells with an Alu-cell structure, we investigate the effect of the amount of Al paste in thin n-type monocrystalline wafers with thicknesses of $120{\mu}m$, $130{\mu}m$, $140{\mu}m$. Formation of the Al doped $p^+$ layer and wafer bowing occurred from the formation process of the Al back electrode was analyzed. Changing the amount of Al paste increased the thickness of the Al doped $p^+$ layer, and sheet resistivity decreased; however, wafer bowing increased due to the thermal expansion coefficient between the Al paste and the c-Si wafer. With the application of $5.34mg/cm^2$ of Al paste, wafer bowing in a thickness of $140{\mu}m$ reached a maximum of 2.9 mm and wafer bowing in a thickness of $120{\mu}m$ reached a maximum of 4 mm. The study's results suggest that when considering uniformity and thickness of an Al doped $p^+$ layer, sheet resistivity, and wafer bowing, the appropriate amount of Al paste for formation of the Al back electrode is $4.72mg/cm^2$ in a wafer with a thickness of $120{\mu}m$.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.17-20
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• 2003

This paper describes the effect of halogenic gettering during oxide passivation of commercial solar cell with the $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure. In order to study the effect of halogenic gettering on $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure mono-crystalline silicon solar cell, we performed conventional POCl$_3$ diffusion for emitter formation and oxide passivation in the presence of HCl vapors. The $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure based silicon solar cells were found to have higher short circuit current and minority carrier lifetime. Their performance was also found to be superior than the conventional $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure based mono-crystalline silicon solar cell. The cell parameters of the $n^{+}$-p-$p^{+}$ and $n^{+}$-p-$n^{+}$ structure based cells, passivated by HCl assisted oxidation were measured. The improvement in $I_{sc}$ was attributed to the effect of the increased diffusion length of minority carriers, which came from the halogenic gettering effect during the growth of passivating oxide. The presence of chlorine caused gettering of the cells by removing the heavy metals, if any. The other advantage of the presence of chlorine was the removal of the diffusion induced (in oxygen environment) stacking faults and line defects from the surfaces of the silicon wafers. All these effects caused the improvement of the minority carrier lifetime, which in-turn helped to improve the quality of the solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.620-624
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• 2012

The role of moisture remaining inside the deposition chamber during the formation of the cubic boron nitride (c-BN) phase in BN film was investigated. BN films were deposited by an unbalanced magnetron sputtering (UBM) method. Single-crystal (001) Si wafers were used as substrates. A hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) target was used as a sputter target which was connected to a 13.56 MHz radiofrequency electric power source at 400 W. The substrate was biased at -60 V using a 200 kHz high-frequency power supply. The deposition pressure was 0.27 Pa with a flow of Ar 18 sccm - $N_2$ 2 sccm mixed gas. The inside of the deposition chamber was maintained at a moisture level of 65% during the initial stage. The effects of the evacuation time, duration time of heating the substrate holder at $250^{\circ}C$ as well as the plasma treatment on the inside chamber wall on the formation of c-BN were studied. The effects of heating as well as the plasma treatment very effectively eliminated the moisture adsorbed on the chamber wall. A pre-deposition condition for the stable and repeatable deposition of c-BN is suggested.