Si Nanocrystal Networks by Si/SiO2 Phase Separation in SiOx Thin Films for Third Generation Solar Cells

Si/SiO2 phase separation in Silicon rich oxides is a very promising synthesis process of novel nanocrystaline Si (nc-Si) structures for 3rd generation thin-film solar cells. The incorporation of larger band gap nanocrystaline silicon into the solar cell structure can be utilized to improve the single band gap silicon solar cells efficiency by allowing a better use of the solar spectrum. We present cw laser annealing of Si-rich oxide thin films with varying Si content to obtain nc-Si embedded in silica. Silicon nanocrystals in the form of a nanocrystaline network (sponge-like) are particularly interesting for their percolated structure. Calculations show that considerable Si band gap widening due to quantum confinement in the nanocrystals network is expected. Beside this wide band gap, sponge-like Si has another potential advantage of suppressing the carrier recombination loss mechanism by electrically percolated nanostructures. SiOx thin films with x<2 were obtained by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD). Hydrogen or nitrogen diluted silane (SiH4) gas was used as the Si source and two different precursor gasses, N2O and CO2, were used for oxygen incorporation. Fine tuning the Si excess in SiOx and optimizing the annealing conditions is pursued to control the inter-nanocrystal distance to generate a network of Si nanocrystals. The network formation depends critically on the precise control of composition during deposition. In the case of SiOx films, it is expected that the network is formed upon phase separation when the stoichiometry parameter of the initial SiOx film is x ~ 1 [1]. Nevertheless, in the case of PECVD grown Si-rich oxides, different elements such as nitrogen, carbon and especially hydrogen can be present in the films. A detailed elemental study has been performed to determine the precise composition of the films using ion beam techniques as elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA) and Rutherford back scattering (RBS), as well as X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and ellipsometry. The presence of hydrogen in PECVD grown samples makes ERDA an essential technique for compositional analysis although it is an expensive and hard to reach method. We have compared the ERDA data of different sets of samples with XPS, FTIR and ellipsometry analysis within the scope of listing a number of correlations between them and, further to be able to obtain the compositional information with these more accessible techniques. After the characterisation of the as-grown samples, the role of the composition in phase separation, as well as the laser irradiation parameters have been investigated and hydrogen has been identified as a key parameter for the Si/SiO2 phase separation. This research is supported by BMBF-TÜBITAK project "RainbowEnergy". [1] T. Muller et al, Applied Physics Letters, 85, 2373 (2004).