Effect of heat treatment of spin-cast solar silicon sheet on crystalline defects

Hyunhui Kim, Jaewoo Lee, Changbum Lee, Joonsoo Kim, Bo Yun Jang, Jinseok Lee, Wooyoung Yoon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)S88-S92
JournalCurrent Applied Physics
Volume13
Issue number4 SUPPL.2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013 Jul 20

Keywords

  • Defects
  • Heat treatment
  • Low-temperature photoluminescence
  • Silicon ribbon
  • Spin-casting

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Materials Science(all)
  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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