Generation of Oxygen-Related Defects in Crystal Silicon Processed by the RPD

Abstract

Suppression of the formation of crystal defects is essential for the realization of high-efficiency solar cells. The reactive plasma deposition (RPD) process introduces defects in the silicon crystal bulk and at the passivation layer/silicon crystal interface. This study suggests that oxygen impurities can affect the generation of RPD-induced defects. Although the RPD deposition conditions were the same, the number of RPD-induced recombination centers in Cz-Si was larger than that in the Fz wafer. The increase in 950 °C pre-annealing resulted in increased peak intensity corresponding to defect level E1 in the Cz-Si MOS sample. In the case of Fz-Si, the increase in intensity with increasing pre-annealing time was slight. This indicates that oxygen precipitation might be related to the structure of RPD-induced defects.