Development and Characterization of a Cvd System for Thin-Film Solar Cell Manufacturing

Abstract

ABSTRACTWith the development of crystalline-silicon thin-film solar cells (c-SiTFC) CVD has gained importance in a new field of application. In recent years research resulted in a large variety of different concepts of c-SiTFCs. Many of these concepts require the deposition of a silicon film of good quality. i.e., at high temperature. However, little effort has been made up to this point to develop a suitable apparatus for that purpose, especially for the case of mass production of such cells. In this paper we present a self-constructed CVD system that we believe has the potential to meet the goals of an economical production of c-SiTFCs. An extension of the existing apparatus into a system in which the substrates enter the reactor at one side and leave it at the other side in a continuous way is feasable.The present system is characterized according to its behavior when typical CVD parameters are changed, the silicon conversion yield was investigated, and solar cells with a maximum efficiency of 15.3% were fabricated from epitaxial layers deposited on various substrates