Fabrication of Tantalum-Doped Titanium-Oxide Electron-Selective Contacts with High Passivation Quality

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the fabrication of Ta-doped TiO2 (TiO2:Ta) electron-selective contacts and their improved passivation qualities. By using thermal atomic layer deposition, 3.5 nm-thick, undoped TiO2 films and 3.5 nm-thick TiO2:Ta films with Ta concentrations of 1.5, 2.8, and 5.5 at.% were formed at 150 °C on n-type crystalline silicon substrates with ∼1 nm-thick chemical SiO2 layers. Rutherford backscattering spectroscopic measurements confirmed the Ta concentrations in the films and uniform distributions of Ta atoms in the films. X-ray photoelectron spectrometry measurements implied that Ta atoms rather cause local structural changes than enter substitutionally into Ti sites. After annealing at 130 °C in air, the effective minority carrier lifetime (τ eff) of the TiO2:Ta-passivated samples were significantly higher than those of the samples passivated with undoped TiO2 films. The highest τ eff was obtained for the samples with a relatively low Ta-doping concentration of 1.5 at.%. On the other hand, the passivation quality was degraded by Ta doping with a too high concentration (for example, 18.4 at.%). These results indicate that moderate Ta doping improves the passivation quality of TiO2 thin films.