Electrical properties and surface morphology of electron beam evaporated p-type silicon thin films on polyethylene terephthalate for solar cells applications
- Nano-Optoelectronics Research and Technology Laboratory, School of Physics, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Minden 11800 Penang (Malaysia)
One way to realize low-cost thin film silicon (Si) solar cells fabrication is by depositing the films with high-deposition rate and manufacturing-compatible electron beam (e-beam) evaporation onto inexpensive foreign substrates such as glass or plastic. Most of the ongoing research is reported on e-beam evaporation of Si films on glass substrates to make polycrystalline solar cells but works combining both e-beam evaporation and plastic substrates are still scarce in the literature. This paper studies electrical properties and surface morphology of 1 µm electron beam evaporated Al-doped p-type silicon thin films on textured polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate for application as an absorber layer in solar cells. In this work, Si thin films with different doping concentrations (including an undoped reference) are prepared by e-beam evaporation. Energy dispersion X-ray (EDX) showed that the Si films are uniformly doped by Al dopant atoms. With increased Al/Si ratio, doping concentration increased while both resistivity and carrier mobility of the films showed opposite relationships. Root mean square (RMS) surface roughness increased. Overall, the Al-doped Si film with Al/Si ratio of 2% (doping concentration = 1.57×10{sup 16} atoms/cm{sup 3}) has been found to provide the optimum properties of a p-type absorber layer for fabrication of thin film Si solar cells on PET substrate.
- OSTI ID:
- 22391516
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1657, Issue 1; Conference: PERFIK 2014: National Physics Conference 2014, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), 18-19 Nov 2014; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CARRIER MOBILITY
CONCENTRATION RATIO
DEPOSITION
DOPED MATERIALS
ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY
ELECTRON BEAMS
EVAPORATION
LAYERS
MORPHOLOGY
PLASTICS
POLYCRYSTALS
POLYESTERS
P-TYPE CONDUCTORS
ROUGHNESS
SILICON
SOLAR CELLS
SUBSTRATES
SURFACES
THIN FILMS