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Annealing Kinetics of Amorphous Silicon Alloy Solar Cells Made at Various Deposition Rates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2011

Baojie Yana ,
Jeffrey Yanga ,
Kenneth Lord  and
Subhendu Guha
Baojie Yana
Affiliation:
United Solar Systems Corp., 1100 West Maple Road, Troy, Michigan 48084
Jeffrey Yanga
Affiliation:
United Solar Systems Corp., 1100 West Maple Road, Troy, Michigan 48084
Kenneth Lord
Affiliation:
United Solar Systems Corp., 1100 West Maple Road, Troy, Michigan 48084
Subhendu Guha
Affiliation:
United Solar Systems Corp., 1100 West Maple Road, Troy, Michigan 48084
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Abstract

A systematic study has been made of the annealing kinetics of amorphous silicon (a-Si) alloy solar cells. The cells were deposited at various rates using H2 dilution with radio frequency (RF) and modified very high frequency (MVHF) glow discharge. In order to minimize the effect of annealing during light soaking, the solar cells were degraded under 30 suns at room temperature to quickly reach their saturated states. The samples were then annealed at an elevated temperature. The J-V characteristics were recorded as a function of annealing time. The correlation of solar cell performance and defect density in the intrinsic layer was obtained by computer simulation. Finally, the annealing activation energy distribution (Ea) was deduced by fitting the experimental data to a theoretical model. The results show that the RF low rate solar cell with high H2 dilution has the lowest Ea and the narrowest distribution, while the RF cell with no H2 dilution has the highest Ea and the broadest distribution. The MVHF cell made at 8Å/s withhigh H2 dilution shows a lower Ea and a narrower distribution than the RF cell made at 3 Å/s, despite the higher rate. We conclude that different annealing kinetics plays an important role in determining the stabilized performance of a-Si alloy solar cells.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 664: Symposium A – Amorphous and Heterogeneous Silicon-Based Films-2001 , 2001 , A25.2.1
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2001

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References

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