TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of heat treatment of spin-cast solar silicon sheet on crystalline defects
AU - Kim, Hyunhui
AU - Lee, Jaewoo
AU - Lee, Changbum
AU - Kim, Joonsoo
AU - Jang, Bo Yun
AU - Lee, Jinseok
AU - Yoon, Wooyoung
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the New and Renewable Energy Technology Development Program of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) grant funded by the Korean Government Ministry of Knowledge Economy ( 2010T100100449 ).
Funding Information:
This work was also financially supported by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) and Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology(KIAT) through the Workforce Development Program in Strategic Technology.
PY - 2013/7/20
Y1 - 2013/7/20
N2 - Silicon sheets were fabricated via spin-casting, which is a ribbon manufacturing method for photovoltaics. Although the advantages of spin-casting include rapid processing and mass production with no silicon loss, crystalline defects such as random grain boundaries (GBs), sub-GBs, or dislocations are generated from rapid solidification. These defects are an important factor in the decreased conversion efficiency of solar cells. Spin-cast sheets were annealed at 950 °C, 1200 °C, and 1350 °C for 2 h to eliminate defects and to increase the grain size. The effect of thermal processing on the sheets was analyzed by comparing them with as-cast sheets and investigated by electron backscattered diffraction, photoluminescence, and etch-pit density. It was confirmed that sub-GBs were almost completely assimilated with neighboring grains with the 1350 °C heat treatment. Suppression of dislocations was observed through the decrease in the D-band peak with low-temperature photoluminescence (PL, 10 K), and few dislocation clusters were observed from the Secco-etched sheet annealed at 1350 °C.
AB - Silicon sheets were fabricated via spin-casting, which is a ribbon manufacturing method for photovoltaics. Although the advantages of spin-casting include rapid processing and mass production with no silicon loss, crystalline defects such as random grain boundaries (GBs), sub-GBs, or dislocations are generated from rapid solidification. These defects are an important factor in the decreased conversion efficiency of solar cells. Spin-cast sheets were annealed at 950 °C, 1200 °C, and 1350 °C for 2 h to eliminate defects and to increase the grain size. The effect of thermal processing on the sheets was analyzed by comparing them with as-cast sheets and investigated by electron backscattered diffraction, photoluminescence, and etch-pit density. It was confirmed that sub-GBs were almost completely assimilated with neighboring grains with the 1350 °C heat treatment. Suppression of dislocations was observed through the decrease in the D-band peak with low-temperature photoluminescence (PL, 10 K), and few dislocation clusters were observed from the Secco-etched sheet annealed at 1350 °C.
KW - Defects
KW - Heat treatment
KW - Low-temperature photoluminescence
KW - Silicon ribbon
KW - Spin-casting
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84890569648&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cap.2013.01.015
DO - 10.1016/j.cap.2013.01.015
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84890569648
SN - 1567-1739
VL - 13
SP - S88-S92
JO - Current Applied Physics
JF - Current Applied Physics
IS - 4 SUPPL.2
ER -