Thin-film polysilicon solar cells are a promising low-cost alternative for bulk silicon solar cells. Due to their reduced material thickness, these solar cells are less dependent on the silicon feedstock price. Until now these devices showed a worse performance compared to bulk Si solar cells due to the small grain size and the high recombination velocity at the grain boundaries. A better understanding of hydrogen passivation is therefore of crucial importance to improve the efficiency of polysilicon solar cells. In this work we characterized fine-grained polysilicon layers with a grain size of only 0.2 μm before and after passivation. Plasma hydrogenation led to a higher hydrogen concentration in the first micron of the layer than nitride passivation. The highest efficiency of 5.0 % was reached when nitride passivation was followed by plasma passivation.

Silicon carbide thin films have been deposited via sublimation of a solid organosilane polymer source using atmospheric pressure chemical vapour deposition process (PS-CVD). The advantages of this new process include high deposition rate, compatibility with batch process, hazard-free working environment and low deposition cost. The silicon carbide (SiC) thin films obtained through this process exhibit a highly uniform film thickness, highly conformal coating, and very high chemical resistance to acids and alkalis solutions. These proven characteristics make the SiC thin films obtained by PSCVD process very attractive as a structural material for micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and as a coating film in a wide range of other applications. These SiC thin films are also expected to be attractive as a semiconductor material provided that the defects and oxygen contamination can be reduced and efficiently controlled. In this work we have investigated the chemical, structural, electrical and optical properties of these films, using elastic recoil detection (ERD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, photospectroscopy, ellipsometry, and capacitance-voltage measurements.

We demonstrated self-aligned nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) n-channel thin film transistors (TFTs) with directly deposited n+ layer. The silicon layers were deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition at a substrate temperature of 150°C. The TFTs were made in a staggered top-gate, bottom-source/drain geometry with a seed layer underneath. The self-alignment of top-gate to the bottom-source/drain was achieved by backside exposure photolithography through the glass substrate and the silicon layers, followed by a lift-off process. An extent of gate to source/drain overlap of 1.5 mm was obtained. The self-aligned TFTs have similar characteristics to their non-self-aligned counterpart. This result represents an important step toward directly deposited nc-Si:H TFT backplanes on plastic substrates.

Because of the inherent desired material and technological attributes such as low temperature deposition and high uniformity over large area, the amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) technology has been extended to digital X-ray diagnostic imaging applications. This paper reports on design, fabrication, and characterization of a MIS-type photosensor that is fully process-compatible with the active matrix a-Si:H TFT backplane. We discuss the device operating principles, along with measurement results of the transient dark current, linearity and spectral response.

The devices analyzed in this work present an S-shape J-V characteristic when illuminated. By changing the light flux a non linear dependence of the photocurrent with illumination is observed. Thus a low intensity light beam can be used to probe the local illumination conditions, since a relationship exists between the probe beam photocurrent and the steady state illumination. Numerical simulation studies showed that the origin of this S-shape lies in a reduced electric field across the intrinsic region, which causes an increase in the recombination losses. Based on this, we present a model for the device consisting of a modulated barrier recombination junction in addition to the p-i-n junction. The simulated results are in good agreement with the experimental data.

Using the presented model a good estimative of the LSP signal under different illumination conditions can be obtained, thus simplifying the development of applications using the LSP as an image sensor, with advantages over the existing imaging systems in the large area sensor fields with the low cost associated to the amorphous silicon technology.

Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) films were deposited by hot-wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD) directly onto Corning glass and polyimide (Kapton E) substrates. The effect of silane concentration (in hydrogen carrier gas) on film crystallinity and conductivity were studied for a constant substrate growth temperature of 220°C. Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) showed that nc-Si:H (grain-size 20-65 nm) was observed for silane concentrations below 5.8 %. Similar to previous reports, closer inspection using XTEM found that there was an initial growth of an amorphous interfacial layer which then crystallized into a randomly-oriented polycrystalline material after 10 - 100 nm of growth.. However, unlike previous reports, there was no detectable difference in the structure or conductivity for films grown on the two types of substrates. In both cases, the dark conductivity decreased with increasing silane concentration while the photo-conductivity was uniform for all films at values between 2 and 4×10-5 S/cm.

In this work, we have conducted a systematic investigation of leakage current and electrical breakdown of plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposited (PECVD) silicon nitride, both for planar films and deposited films on the vertical sidewall for the application of the vertical thin film transistors. The thickness evolution of physical properties and electrical characteristics of silicon nitride films in the range of 50 to 300 nm are investigated. Electrical breakdown strength for 150-300nm thick films was approximately 7 MV/cm, whereas the value dropped to ~3MV/cm for 50nm thick films deposited under the same process conditions. It is shown that the early failure of the thin nitride is accompanied by the increase of the pinholes number. For the vertical thin film transistors, the experimental result shows the reliability and leakage current of the gate dielectric depends on the step coverage of the silicon nitride film on the vertical sidewall.

The amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) TFT and MIS capacitor, which include an a-Si:H layer embedded in the silicon nitride gate dielectric layer, have been prepared and characterized for memory functions. Large shifts of the threshold voltage and flat band voltage were detected in the current-voltage and capacitance-voltage hysteresis measurements. The embedded a-Si:H film functioned as a charge retention medium that stores and releases injected carriers. The devices memory capacity varied with the thickness of the embedded a-Si:H layer and the sweep voltage. These low-cost memory devices can be used in many low-temperature prepared circuits.

We deposited a-SiCN:H films by HWCVD using a gas mixture of hexamethyldisilazane, H2 and N2, and fabricated cast polycrystalline silicon solar cells with the a-SiCN:H passivation and anti-reflection layer. N2 addition led to the reduction of the refractive index of the a-SiCN:H films due to the increase in nitrogen concentration of the films. This improved performance of the antireflection layer. The advantage of adding N2 to the process was demonstrated by the improvement in short circuit current (JSC) and efficiency of cast polycrystalline silicon solar cells. At present, the efficiency of cast polycrystalline silicon solar cell using a-SiCN:H film as a passivation layer reached 14.2%.

At the University of Toledo (UT), we have investigated hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) n-i-p solar cells with intrinsic layers deposited at high rates, ~ 8 Å/s, using our UT multi-chamber load-locked PECVD system. a-Si:H i-layers were grown with a VHF plasma density of ~ 0.2 W/cm2 and a frequency of 70 MHz using various hydrogen dilution levels. It is observed from the current-voltage (I-V) device performance characteristics that the open-circuit voltage (Voc) increases with increasing hydrogen dilution reaching a maximum and then decreasing. This drop in Voc can be attributed to the transition region (or protocrystalline regime) from an amorphous phase into a mixed amorphous+nanocrystalline (a + nc) phase for the i-layer. An initial efficiency of 9.99% (Voc = 0.986 V, Jsc = 13.98 mA/cm2, FF = 72.5%) was obtained. Quantum efficiency (QE) measurement has shown that the blue light response increases as the hydrogen dilution increases. Very good blue light spectral response with QE values over 0.7 at the wavelength of 400 nm have been obtained for a-Si:H cells made under specific deposition conditions in which tailored protocrystalline silicon materials were incorporated at the i/p interface region.

We have implemented a number of methods to improve the performance of proto-Si/proto-SiGe/μc-Si:H triple junction n-i-p solar cells in which the top and bottom cell i-layers are deposited by Hot-Wire CVD. Firstly, a significant current enhancement is obtained by using textured Ag/ZnO back contacts developed in house instead of plain stainless steel. We studied the correlation between the integrated current density in the long wavelength range (650-1000 nm) with the back reflector surface roughness and clarified that the rms roughness from 2D AFM images correlates well with the long wavelength response of the cell when weighted with a Power Spectral Density function. For single junction 2-μm thick μc-Si:H n-i-p cells we improved the short circuit current density from the value of 15.2 mA/cm2 for plain stainless steel to 23.4 mA/cm2 for stainless steel coated with a textured Ag/ZnO back reflector.

Secondly, we optimized the μc-Si:H n-type doped layer on this rough back reflector, the n/i interface, and in addition used a profiling scheme for the H2/SiH4 ratio during i-layer deposition. The H2 dilution during growth was stepwise increased in order to prevent a transition to amorphous growth. The efficiency that was reached for a single junction μc-Si:H n-i-p cell was 8.5%, which is the highest reported value for hot-wire deposited cells of this kind, whereas the deposition rate of 2.1 Å/s is about twice as high as in record cells of this type so far. Moreover, these cells show to be totally stable under light-soaking tests.

Combining the above techniques, a rather thin triple junction cell (total silicon thickness 2.5 μm) has been obtained with an efficiency of 10.9%. Preliminary light-soaking tests show that this type of triple cells degrades by less than 4%.

Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin film transistors (TFTs) of which active layer thickness was 100nm were fabricated using inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition (ICP-CVD) at 150°C. The fabricated nc-Si TFT exhibits rather high field effect mobility exceeding 22cm2/Vs and excellent sub-threshold slope of 0.45V/dec. The nc-Si film deposited 150°C as an active layer of the TFT shows high crystallinity more than 70% and very thin incubation layer less than 20nm. ICP-CVD provides high density plasma with reduced ion bombardment during the deposition on nc-Si and He dilution can enhance the decomposition of SiH4 into Si, SiHX radicals and atomic H, so that high quality nc-Si film can be fabricated. The gate insulator SiO2 film deposited by ICP-CVD at 150°C shows good electrical characteristics such as flat band voltage of -1.8V and breakdown voltage of 6.2MV/cm.

We report on the fabrication and characterization of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films and n-i-p photodiodes on glass and PEN plastic substrates using low-temperature (150°C) plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Process conditions were optimized for the i-a-Si:H material which had a band gap of ~1.73 eV and low density of states (of the order 1015 cm-3). Diodes with 0.5 μm i-layer demonstrate quantum efficiency ~70%. The reverse dark current of the diodes on glass and PEN plastic substrate is ~10-11 and below 10-10 A/cm2, respectively. We discuss the difference in electrical characteristics of n-i-p diodes on glass and PEN in terms of bulk- and interface-state generation currents.

Microcrystalline silicon was deposited on glass by standard plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition using H2 diluted SiH4. Raman spectroscopy indicated a crystalline volume fraction of as high as 40% in films deposited at a substrate temperature 350oC. The deposition rate in films was as high as 10Å/sec. This process produced ¥ìc-Si TFTs with both an electron mobility of 10.9cm2/Vs, a threshold voltage of 1.2V, a subthreshold slop of 0.5V/dec at n-channel TFTs and a hole mobility of 3.2cm2/Vs, a threshold voltage of -5V, a subthreshold slop of 0.42V/dec at p-channel TFTs without post-fabrication annealing.

Amorphous silicon-based x-ray image sensor arrays were fabricated on poly-ethylene naphthalate substrates at process temperatures below 180°C. Patterning of the thin-film transistor backplane was accomplished using ink-jet printed etch masks. The sensor devices were found to be comparable to high-temperature processed devices. The integration of the sensor stack, TFT array and PEN substrate resulted in a flexible x-ray image sensor with 180×180 pixels with 75 dpi resolution.

Optimized a-SiC:H multilayer devices based on two different tandem configurations (TCO/pinpi'n/TCO and TCO/pini'p/TCO) are compared and tested for proper image recognition and color separation process using an optical readout technique. In both configurations the doped layers are based on a-SiC:H to increase image resolution and to prevent image blurring. To profit from the light filtering properties of the active absorbers, the intrinsic layer of the front diode (i layer) is based on a-SiC:H and the back one (i'layer) on a-Si:H.

The effect of the applied voltage on the color selectivity is discussed. Results show that the relative spectral response curves demonstrate rather good separation between the red, green and blue basic colors. Combining the information obtained under positive and negative applied bias a colour image is acquired, using the same optical technique either in pinpi'n or in the pini'p configuration, without colour filters or pixel architecture.

The temperature dependence of Si-based thin-film single junction solar cells on the phase of the intrinsic absorber is investigated in order to find the optimal absorber at high operating temperatures. For comparison, hydrogenated amorphous, protocrystalline, and microcrystalline silicon solar cells are fabricated by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition and hot-wired CVD techniques. Photo J-V characteristics are measured using a solar simulator at the ambient temperature range of 25-85°C. It is found that the cells with a higher open-circuit voltage usually show lower temperature-dependent behaviors; the protocrystalline silicon solar cells provide the lowest temperature coefficient of efficiency, while the microcrystalline silicon solar cells are highly sensitive to the temperature. Therefore, protocrystalline silicon solar cells are promising for use in high temperature regions.

The effect of ion bombardment on the relationship between the critical hydrogen concentration and the reactor pressure has been investigated for hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) deposited with the expanding thermal plasma-CVD (ETP-CVD) method. By changing the reactor pressure the ionic cluster formation in the plasma can be varied. It is observed that the decrease of the critical hydrogen concentration with increasing reactor pressure can not be compensated by ion bombardment at 14V biasing. Biasing with 20V however increases the critical hydrogen concentration nearly up to the value obtained at low pressures. This indicates that the incorporation of ionic cluster formed at elevated reactor pressures can be reduced by substrate biasing, possibly due to break-up upon impact on the substrate surface or due to processes occurring in the secondary plasma close to the substrate.

A Si nanocrystal based metal-oxide-semiconductor light-emitting diode (MOSLED) on Si nano-pillar array is preliminarily demonstrated. Rapid self-aggregation of Ni nanodots on Si substrate covered with a thin SiO2 buffered layer is employed as the etching mask for obtaining Si nano-pillar array. Dense Ni nanodots with size and density of 30 nm and 2.8×10 cm-2, respectively, can be formatted after rapid thermal annealing at 850°C for 22 s. The nano-roughened Si surface contributes to both the relaxation of total-internal reflection at device-air interface and the Fowler-Nordheim tunneling enhanced turn-on characteristics, providing the MOSLED a maximum optical power of 0.7 uW obtained at biased current of 375 uA. The optical intensity, turn-on current, power slope and external quantum efficiency of the MOSLED are 140 μW/cm2, 5 uA, 2+-0.8 mW/A and 1×10-3, respectively, which is almost one order of magnitude larger than that of a same device made on smooth Si substrate.

For silicon nitride (SiNx) deposited at 3 nm/s using hot wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD), the mass-density reached an ultra high value of 3.0 g/cm3. Etch rates in a 16BHF solution show that the lowest etch rate occurs for films with a N/Si ratio of 1.2, the ratio where also the maximum in mass density occurs. The thus found etch rate of 7 nm/min is much better than that for PECVD layers, even when made at a much lower deposition rate. The root-mean-square (rms) roughness measured on 300 nm thick SiN1.2 layers is only about 1 nm, which is advantageous for obtaining high field-effect mobility in thin-film transistors. SiN1.2 films have succesfully been tested in “all hot wire” thin film transistors (TFTs). SiNx films with various x values in the range 1.0 < × <1.5 have been incorporated in metal-insulator-semiconductor structures with n-type c-Si wafers to determine their electrical properties from C-V and I-V measurements. We analyzed the behavior of the static dielectric constant, fixed nitride charges and trapped nitride charges as function of N/Si ratio. I-V measurements show that the HW SiNx films with N/Si ≥ 1.33 have high dielectric breakdown fields that exceed 5.9 MV/cm. For these films we deduce a low positive fixed nitride charge density of 6.2-7.8 × 1016 cm-3 from the flat band voltage and from the small hysteresis in the backward sweep we deduce a low fast trapped charge density of 1.3-1.7 × 1011 cm-2. The dielectric constant ε for different compositions is seen not to change appreciably over the whole range and amounts to 6.3 ± 0.1. These high-density SiNx films possess very low tensile stress (down to 16 MPa), which will be helpful in for instance, plastic electronics applications. HWCVD provides high quality a-SiNx materials with good dielectric properties at a high deposition rate.