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Amorphous silicon

About: Amorphous silicon is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 26777 publications have been published within this topic receiving 423234 citations.


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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the effect of light trapping on amorphous silicon solar cells on textured tin oxide films produced from tetramethyltin, bromotrifluoromethane and oxygen.

91 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the optical (photocurrent) absorption spectrum can be measured directly in absolute units (cm−1) without additional calibration and undisturbed by interference fringes.
Abstract: Direct measurement of the deep defect density in thin amorphous silicon films with the help of the ‘‘absolute’’ constant photocurrent method is demonstrated here. We describe in detail how the optical (photocurrent) absorption spectrum can be measured directly in absolute units (cm−1) without additional calibration and undisturbed by interference fringes. Computer simulation was performed to demonstrate absolute precision of the measurement and to explain residual interferences which are sometimes observed. The residual interferences are shown to be direct fingerprints of an inhomogeneous defect distribution.

90 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a 400 μm×100 μm parallel image was obtained in the time it would normally take to obtain a 100 μm × 100μm image, using a parallel array of five piezoresistive cantilevers.
Abstract: Lithography on (100) single‐crystal silicon and amorphous silicon is performed by electric‐field‐enhanced local oxidation of silicon using an atomic force microscope (AFM). Amorphous silicon is used as a negative resist to pattern silicon oxide, silicon nitride, and selected metals. Amorphous silicon is used in conjunction with chromium to create a robust etch mask, and with titanium to create a positive AFM resist. All lithographies presented here were patterned in parallel by arrays of two piezoresistive silicon or two silicon‐nitride cantilevers. Parallel arrays of five piezoresistive cantilevers were fabricated and used in imaging and lithographic applications. A 400 μm×100 μm parallel image is obtained in the time it would normally take to obtain a 100 μm×100 μm image. In our method of parallel operation, it is only possible to image and lithograph in modes that do not require feedback. In imaging, this limits the possible applications of the parallel AFM. During parallel lithography, discrepancies a...

90 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The photoluminescence of erbium-doped semi-insulating polycrystalline and amorphous silicon containing 30 at.m. oxygen is studied in this article.
Abstract: The photoluminescence of erbium‐doped semi‐insulating polycrystalline and amorphous silicon containing 30 at. % oxygen is studied. The films were deposited on single‐crystal Si substrates by chemical vapor deposition, implanted with 500 keV Er to fluences ranging from 0.05 to 6×1015 ions/cm2, and annealed at 300–1000 °C. Upon optical pumping near 500 nm, the samples show room‐temperature luminescence around 1.54 μm due to intra‐4f transitions in Er3+, excited by photogenerated carriers. The strongest luminescence is obtained after 400 °C annealing. Two classes of Er3+ can be distinguished, characterized by luminescence lifetimes of 170 and 800 μs. The classes are attributed to Er3+ in Si‐rich and in O‐rich environments. Photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy on a sample with 1×1015 Er/cm2 shows that ∼2% of the implanted Er is optically active. No quenching of the Er luminescence efficiency is observed between 77 K and room temperature in this Si‐based semiconductor. The internal quantum efficiency for the excitation of Er3+ via photogenerated carriers is 10−3 at room temperature. A model is presented which explains the luminescence data in terms of trapping of electrical carriers at localized Er‐related defects, and subsequent energy transfer to Er3+ ions, which can then decay by emission of 1.5 μm photons.

90 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, vanadium suboxide (V2Ox) capped with a thin Ni layer was used as a hole transport layer trying to avoid both the intrinsic amorphous silicon layer and the TCO contact layer.
Abstract: Over the last few years, transition metal oxide layers have been proposed as selective contacts both for electrons and holes and successfully applied to silicon solar cells. However, better published results need the use of both a thin and high quality intrinsic amorphous Si layer and TCO (Transparent Conductive Oxide) films. In this work, we explore the use of vanadium suboxide (V2Ox) capped with a thin Ni layer as a hole transport layer trying to avoid both the intrinsic amorphous silicon layer and the TCO contact layer. Obtained figures of merit for Ni/V2Ox/c-Si(n) test samples are saturation current densities of 175 fA cm−2 and specific contact resistance below 115 mΩ cm2 on 40 nm thick V2Ox layers. Finally, the Ni/V2Ox stack is used with an interdigitated back-contacted c-Si(n) solar cell architecture fully fabricated at low temperatures. An open circuit voltage, a short circuit current and a fill factor of 656 mV, 40.7 mA cm−2 and 74.0% are achieved, respectively, leading to a power conversion efficiency of 19.7%. These results confirm the high potential of Ni/V2Ox stacks as hole-selective contacts on crystalline silicon photovoltaics.

90 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023118
2022214
2021245
2020422
2019526
2018571