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Thin Solid Films 516 (2008) 6984 – 6988

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Fabrication and characterization of highly efficient

thin-film polycrystalline-silicon solar cells based
on aluminium-induced crystallization
I. Gordon ⁎, L. Carnel, D. Van Gestel, G. Beaucarne, J. Poortmans
IMEC vzw, Kapeldreef 75, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium

Available online 17 December 2007

Abstract

Thin-film polycrystalline-silicon solar cells might become an alternative to bulk silicon solar cells if sufficiently high efficiencies can be
obtained. In this work we made pc-Si layers using aluminium-induced crystallization and thermal CVD on alumina substrates. By using plasma
texturing and optimizing the cell structure, we increased the current density of our cells and achieved a cell efficiency of 8.0%. At present, our cell
efficiency seems to be mainly limited by the presence in our layers of a high density of electronically active intragrain defects. Intragrain quality
improvement will therefore be very important to further increase our pc-Si cell efficiency.
© 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Polycrystalline silicon; Thin-film solar cell; Aluminium-induced crystallization; Defect characterization; Plasma texturing; Light trapping

1. Introduction efficiencies close to 10% and open-circuit voltage (Voc) values

around 500 mV per cell have recently been reported by CSG
The current high price of photovoltaic electricity could be Solar AG [2].
lowered substantially if efficient solar modules could be made As an alternative for SPC, we use aluminium-induced
from polycrystalline-silicon (pc-Si) thin films on inexpensive crystallization (AIC) of amorphous silicon (a-Si) followed by
foreign substrates. At present the semiconducting material in high-temperature epitaxial thickening [3]. The AIC process leads
standard crystalline-silicon solar modules accounts for 30 to 40% to very thin and highly Al-doped pc-Si seed layers with a typical
of the total device cost. A thin-film Si solar cell technology could grain size in the range of 5–20 μm [4]. Absorber layers for solar
lead to much cheaper devices by the use of less silicon material, cells can then be made by epitaxial thickening of these AIC layers.
but also by the implementation of monolithic module processes. For this, we use chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at temperatures
To lower the photovoltaic electricity price, the thin-film modules above 1000 °C. As substrates, we use ceramic alumina and glass-
not only need to be produced inexpensively, but also need to have ceramics that can withstand these high deposition temperatures
high efficiencies. A technology based on polycrystalline-silicon [3]. The advantage of the AIC seed layer approach is that sub-
thin films with a grain size between 1 μm and 1 mm (pc-Si), stantially larger grains can be obtained compared to the SPC
seems particularly promising since it combines the low-cost approach that leads to grains with a typical size around 1–2 μm.
potential of a thin-film technology with the high efficiency The electronic quality of pc-Si layers made by AIC and epitaxial
potential of crystalline silicon. For an overview of the field of pc- thickening could therefore be better than that of pc-Si made by
Si solar cells we refer to Ref. [1]. State-of-the-art pc-Si mini- SPC due to the reduced amount of grain boundaries, on the
modules based on solid-phase crystallization (SPC) with condition that the electronic intragrain quality is high.
The main efficiency-limiting factor of our pc-Si solar cells
⁎ Corresponding author. IMEC, Solar Cell Technology Group, Kapeldreef 75, based on AIC is most likely the presence of many intragrain
B-3001 Leuven, Belgium. Tel.: +32 16 288249; fax: +32 16 281501. defects. We recently showed that solar cells made from pc-Si
E-mail address: Ivan.Gordon@imec.be (I. Gordon). layers with very small grains of 0.2 µm had almost the same
0040-6090/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tsf.2007.12.114
 I. Gordon et al. / Thin Solid Films 516 (2008) 6984–6988 6985

open-circuit values (Voc) as solar cells made from AIC-based pc- Table 1
Si layers with grain diameters of up to 50 µm [5,6]. These Comparison of the illuminated characteristics of pc-Si solar cells with and
without plasma texturing of the front surface
results indicate that grain boundaries and grain size distribution
are not the only factors limiting the electronic quality of our pc- Jsc (mA cm− 2) Voc (mV) Fill factor (%) Efficiency (%)
Si layers. A detailed study of the electronic intragrain quality of As-grown 17.2 483 69 5.7
our layers with Electron Beam Induced Current (EBIC) Plasma-textured 19.7 506 71 7.0
measurements showed the presence of a very large number of The listed values are from the best cells on both samples.
electrically active intragrain defects (IGD) [7].
In this paper we report on our latest progress with pc-Si solar gases [9]. Typically around 1 μm of silicon was removed during
cells based on AIC and thermal CVD. We first describe how we texturing.
reached cell efficiencies up to 8.0% by optimizing the light Heterojunction emitters were formed by deposition of thin
trapping in our pc-Si solar cells. We then study the effect of double layers of undoped and P-doped a-Si using plasma-
IGDs on the electrical quality of our pc-Si layers. enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) at 180 °C. The
total thickness of this emitter was around 17 nm. Before emitter
2. Experimental formation, defect passivation of the layers was performed by
plasma hydrogenation in the same PECVD system at 400 °C.
We made pc-Si films on alumina substrates (CoorsTek To complete the solar cells, indium tin oxide (ITO) was
ADS996R) by epitaxial thickening of AIC seed layers. The deposited by rf-sputtering as anti-reflective coating (ARC) and
substrates were covered by a spin-on flowable oxide (Fox-25 from metal contacts were formed. Conductive ITO is used to avoid
Dow Corning) to reduce their surface roughness, prior to the seed excessive resistive losses in the thin a-Si emitter. The contacts
layer formation [8]. Double layers of Al and a-Si were deposited were formed by photolithography and wet chemical etching in
on these substrates in an electron-beam high-vacuum evaporator. combination with metal evaporation. Both base and emitter
In between the two depositions, the aluminium was oxidized by contacts are on top of the cell in interdigitated finger patterns.
exposure to air for 2 min to obtain samples with grain sizes up to All cells were measured under AM1.5 (1000 W/m2) illumi-
15 μm, or treated by HNO3 to obtain samples with grain sizes up nation with an aperture area of 1 cm2. Fig. 1 shows a schematic
to 50 μm [5]. The nominal thickness of the Al and a-Si layers was cross-section of our pc-Si solar cells.
fixed at 200 nm and 250 nm respectively. After deposition, the EBIC measurements were performed at room temperature in
samples were annealed in a tube furnace under nitrogen ambient at a Philips XL 30 system on pc-Si layers with a diffused emitter.
500 °C for 4 h. During this annealing, the a-Si fully crystallized The emitter was formed by diffusion of phosphorus atoms at a
into pc-Si and both layers exchanged places. Finally, the top temperature of 860 °C. EBIC measurements on pc-Si layers
aluminium layer was removed by selective chemical etching. with a heterojunction emitter were not reproducible, probably
Absorber layers were deposited on the AIC layers by thermal because of e-beam induced degradation of the thin a-Si layers.
CVD. The depositions were performed in a single-wafer epitaxial
reactor (ASM Epsilon2000) under atmospheric pressure, at a 3. Results and discussion
temperature of 1130 °C. The growth rate was around 1.4 µm/min.
Double layers of p+ and p silicon with variable thickness ratios This section presents our recent pc-Si solar cell results and a
were made. The epitaxial p+ layer acts as a back surface field detailed characterization of the intragrain quality of our pc-Si
(BSF) while the p layer is the actual absorber layer. We note that the layers. First, it describes how we increased the current density
AIC seed layer is highly doped with Al (active doping ~3 × 1018 of our cells and reached energy conversion efficiencies of 8.0%
cm− 3) and therefore could also act as a BSF layer. For sufficient by optimizing the light trapping. Secondly, it shows how our
lateral conductivity, the epitaxial p+ layer is however needed. The layers contain many electrically active intragrain defects that are
total pc-Si layer thickness was always between 2 and 4 μm. most likely limiting our cell efficiency.
After epitaxial deposition, some of the pc-Si layers were
textured using plasma texturing. The plasma texturing was done 3.1. Solar cell fabrication
in a prototype reactor from Secon using micro-wave antennas
positioned above the substrates, with SF6 and N2O as precursor We developed a process that yields pc-Si solar cells in substrate
configuration on alumina substrates with a-Si/c-Si heterojunction
emitters and interdigitated top contacts (see Fig. 1). The alumina
substrate is smoothened by a spin-on oxide. This increases the
electronic quality of the AIC seed layers and the absorber layers
[8]. The average grain size of our standard pc-Si layers is around 5
μm with maximum grain sizes around 15 μm. The cells have
heterojunction emitters consisting of thin a-Si layers that lead to
much higher Voc values than diffused homojunction emitters due
to better hydrogen bulk passivation and due to the absence of
preferential phosphorus diffusion along grain boundaries
Fig. 1. Schematic cross-section of our pc-Si solar cells (not drawn in scale). [6,10,11]. Base and emitter contacts are on top of the cell in an
6986 I. Gordon et al. / Thin Solid Films 516 (2008) 6984–6988

ering the front surface reflection and by leading to a better

coupling of incident light into the cells [3]. Although the alumina
substrates act as diffuse back reflectors, the current density of our
thin pc-Si solar cells without textured front surface is relatively
low with short-circuit current density (Jsc) values around 17 mA
cm− 2 [10]. The plasma texturing process removes around 1 μm of
silicon and results in a much lower surface reflectance. Further-
more, the reflectance is nearly completely diffuse after plasma
texturing while there is a large specular component in the reflec-
tance of as-grown layers [13]. At cell level, plasma texturing the
front side of our pc-Si layers on alumina led to an increase in Jsc
by roughly 15% from 17.2 mA cm− 2 for an untextured cell to
19.7 mA cm− 2 for the textured cell (see Table 1) [3]. Both sam-
ples had an epitaxial BSF thickness of 0.5 μm and an original
Fig. 2. Illuminated current–voltage curve of our best pc-Si solar cell to date. The absorber thickness of 3 μm. Besides the current increase, plasma
inset shows the internal quantum efficiency as a function of wavelength for the
texturing also led to a small increase in Voc. This is the result of the
same cell.
lower total thickness of the plasma-textured cell. As a result of the
interdigitated finger pattern that leads to good fill factors even current and voltage increase, plasma texturing led to an increase in
when thin epitaxially grown BSF layers are used [12]. efficiency from 5.7% to 7.0%.
We recently developed a plasma texturing process that en- When plasma texturing is applied on cells with epitaxial BSF
hances the short-circuit current of our pc-Si solar cells by low- layers thicker than 0.5 μm, the current density increase is only
very small, and sometimes even lower current densities are ob-
tained [13]. The reason for this is that the long wavelength
response of our cells is largely determined by the relative thickness

Fig. 4. (a) Top view SEM and (b) top view EBIC images at room temperature of
the same area of a pc-Si layer. Electrically active intragrain defects are visible
Fig. 3. Top view SEM pictures of a defect-etched pc-Si layer. In (a) several large with a pattern comparable to that observed in the defect-etched layers (see Fig. 3).
grains can be distinguished. These grains contain many intragrain defects which The samples had a diffused emitter. These images are reused with permission
appear in regular patterns. (b) is a zoom-in of one of these grains. from reference [7].
 I. Gordon et al. / Thin Solid Films 516 (2008) 6984–6988 6987

of the absorber layer to that of the BSF layer. Light that is not the plasma-textured cell of Table 1. The inset of Fig. 2 shows the
absorbed in the absorber layer has to pass twice through the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of the 8.0% cell as a function
BSF layer before it can enter the absorber layer again. Light of wavelength. This cell has a better IQE at wavelengths above
that gets absorbed in the BSF layer does not contribute to the 700 nm compared to the plasma-textured cell of Table 1 that had
current density since the diffusion length in this highly doped a thicker BSF layer. This shows that the higher current arises
layer is very small. After plasma texturing, cells have a thinner from less light absorption in the thinner BSF layer. The epitaxial
absorber layer than before and hence a smaller absorber to BSF BSF thickness of 0.25 μm is a compromise between the need to
thickness ratio. Moreover, the influence of the BSF layer on the minimize the thickness of this layer to prevent light loss and the
external quantum efficiency is even stronger for textured cells need to have a minimal lateral conductivity for the majority
than for untextured cells since light that does not get absorbed carriers. The fill factor of the cell was 73%, indicating that there
in the absorber layer has to pass twice through the BSF layer were no series resistance problems. When going to even thinner
under a shallow angle due to the oblique light coupling. Espe- BSF layers, the fill factor starts to decrease due to an increasing
cially for textured cells, the epitaxial BSF thickness should series resistance.
therefore be minimized.
By lowering the epitaxial BSF thickness of our layers and by 3.2. Layer characterization
slightly optimizing the metal contact pattern, we managed to
further improve the Jsc and efficiency of our cells. Our best pc-Si We recently showed that the Voc of our poly-Si solar cells is
solar cell efficiency so far is 8.0%. We reached 8% cells on three almost independent of the grain size [5,6]. By performing a defect
different samples that each have a size of 5 × 5 cm2 and contain etch on our pc-Si layers, we found a very high intragrain defect
12 cells. The average efficiency of the cells on these samples is density of around 109 cm− 2 in our layers [7]. Fig. 3 shows two top
around 7.8%. This shows that our pc-Si solar cell process is view Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images of a defect-
reproducible and leads to homogeneous results. Fig. 2 shows the etched pc-Si layer. This layer had larger grains than our standard
illuminated current–voltage graph of such an 8% cell. The cell pc-Si layers used to achieve the 8.0% cell efficiency, but did not
was plasma-textured and had an epitaxial BSF thickness of 0.25 lead to higher Voc values [5]. We used this large-grained pc-Si
μm and an original absorber layer thickness of 3 μm. The short- layer because intragrain defects are more easily detectable when
circuit current density is around 1 mA cm− 2 higher than that of dealing with large grains. We note however that similar results are

Fig. 5. Room temperature EBIC images of the same area of a pc-Si layer taken at different acceleration voltages. The contrast of the grain boundary is changing with
the voltage.
6988 I. Gordon et al. / Thin Solid Films 516 (2008) 6984–6988

obtained after defect etching of our standard pc-Si layers. Fig. 3a 4. Conclusions
shows that different grains can be clearly distinguished after
defect etching. Moreover, many defects are visible inside the In this work we presented a polycrystalline-silicon solar cell
grains. Fig. 3b zooms in on a single grain. Besides intragrain with an efficiency of 8%. The pc-Si layer was made by
defects appearing as points (e.g. dislocation lines crossing the aluminium-induced crystallization of amorphous silicon and
surface), also square shaped structures, U shaped lines and per- thermal CVD on an alumina substrate. The front surface of the
pendicular lines are present. In all investigated grains where the cell was plasma-textured to lower the front side reflection and to
square shaped structures, the U shaped lines and the perpendicular obtain oblique coupling of incident light into the cells, which
lines were visible after defect etching, the grains had a (001) orien- leads to higher current densities. The current density was further
tation as verified by Electron Back Scatter Diffraction (EBSD). enhanced by minimizing the BSF layer thickness of the cells to
We note that most of the grains in our pc-Si layers have a (001) reduce light absorption in this highly doped layer.
orientation as a result of the AIC process. The observed structures We found a high density of electronically active intragrain
and lines can therefore be attributed to epitaxial stacking faults defects in our epitaxially thickened AIC layers. The presence of
along (111) planes when looking at a (001) plane [7]. From the these defects may explain the quasi-independence of the Voc of
length of the squares and the lines, we can calculate that most our pc-Si solar cells on the grain size of the layer. Intragrain
defects were formed in the seed layer or at the seed layer–epitaxial quality improvement will therefore be very important to further
layer interface. increase our pc-Si cell efficiency.
To check whether the observed intragrain defects are elec-
trically active, we performed room temperature EBIC measure- Acknowledgements
ments on pc-Si layers with a diffused emitter. Fig. 4a and b
respectively shows top view SEM and top view EBIC images of This work was partly funded by the European Commission under
the same area of a large-grained poly-Si solar cell [7]. The accel- contract number 019670-FP6-IST-IP (‘ATHLET’). The authors thank
eration voltage used for the EBIC measurement was 10 kV. The M. J. Romero from NREL for the fruitful discussions and Jan D'Haen
EBIC image shows the same pattern as that found after defect for the EBIC measurements. Kris Van Nieuwenhuysen is greatly
etching, indicating that the crystallographic intragrain defects acknowledged for the epitaxial depositions.
show a strong recombination activity. The mutual different
orientation of the defect lines in both grains of Fig. 4b is the References
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show an increased collection compared to the intragrain regions. Beaucarne, J. Poortmans, Proceedings of the 4th World Conference on
At higher acceleration voltages, electron-hole generation extends Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, Hawaii, U.S.A., May 8–12, 2006, p. 1449.
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