High Rate Deposition of Amorphous Silicon Based Solar Cells using Modified Very High Frequency Glow Discharge

Abstract

AbstractWe report our recent progress on high rate deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) and silicon germanium (a-SiGe:H) based n-i-p solar cells. The intrinsic a-Si:H and a-SiGe:H layers were deposited using modified very high frequency (MVHF) glow discharge. We found that both the initial cell performance and stability of the MVHF a-Si:H single-junction cells are independent of the deposition rate up to 15 Å/s. The average initial and stable active-area cell efficiencies of 10.0% and 8.5%, respectively, were obtained for the cells on textured Ag/ZnO coated stainless steel substrates. a-SiGe:H single-junction cells were also optimized at a rate of ~10 Å/s. The cell performance is similar to those made using conventional radio frequency technique at 3 Å/s. By combining the optimized component cells made at 10 Å/s, an a-Si:H/a-SiGe:H double-junction solar cell with an initial active-area efficiency of 11.7% was achieved.