Analysis of growth of silicon thin films on textured and non-textured surface

Abstract

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon alloy films are generally deposited by radio frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (RF PECVD) technique on various types of substrates. Generally it is assumed that film quality remains unchanged when deposited on textured or non-textured substrates. Here we analyzed the difference in growth of thin film silicon layers when deposited in a textured and a non-textured surface. In this investigation characteristics of two solar cells were compared, where one cell was prepared on a textured surface ( Cell-A) while the other prepared on a non-textured surface (Cell-B). Defect analysis of the devices were carried out by simulation and device modeling. It shows that the intrinsic film deposited on a textured surface was more defective ($2.4\times 10^{17}$ cm$^{-3}$) than that deposited on a flat surface ($3.2\times 10^{16}$ cm$^{-3}$). Although the primary differences in these two cells were thickness of the active layer and nature of surface texturing, the simulation results show that thin film deposited on a textured surface may acquire an increased defect density than that deposited on a flat surface. Lower effective flux density of $SiH_{3}$ precursors on the textured surface can be one of the reasons for higher defect density in the film deposited on textured surface. An Improved light coupling can be achieved by using a thinner doped window layer. By changing the thickness from 15 nm to 3 nm, the short circuit current density increased from 16.4 mA/cm$^{2}$ to 20.96 mA/cm$^{2}$ and efficiency increased from $9.4\%$ to $12.32\%$.