Highly Conductive Boron Doped Microcrystalline Si Films Deposited by Hot Wire Cell Method and its Application to Solar Cells

Abstract
Boron doped microcrystalline silicon (p-µc-Si) films were successfully deposited by the Hot Wire Cell method using a gas mixture of pure silane (SiH4) and diborane (0.5% B2H6 in H2). The influence of various deposition parameters on the structural and electrical properties of the films was investigated to obtain highly conductive p-µc-Si films. A high dark conductivity (σd) of 84.6 S/cm and a low activation energy of 0.02 eV were achieved for 550-nm-thick films. For thin films with a thickness of 15 nm, a σd of 4×10-2 S/cm was obtained. The thin p-µc-Si was incorporated into p–i–n amorphous silicon (a-Si) and microcrystalline silicon (µc-Si) solar cells, in which intrinsic layers were deposited by photo chemical vapor deposition (photo-CVD). The initial conversion efficiencies of 9.04% and 6.17% were obtained for a-Si and µc-Si solar cells, respectively.

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