Electronic quality improvement of crystalline silicon by stain etching-based PS nanostructures for solar cells application

Abstract

In the present work, the impact of stain etching-based Porous Silicon (PS) nanostructures on both the effective lifetime and photoluminescence were examined. Results showed that stain etching-based PS nanostructures increase the effective lifetime from 3μs (un-etched samples) to 48μs (following 8min etching time) at a minority carrier density (Δn) of 1015cm−3 and drastically decrease the silicon surface reflectivity from about 28% to approximately 7%. These results allowed to correlate between the rise of the effective lifetime values and the photoluminescence intensity; which in turn depends on the effects of hydrogen and oxygen passivation. Consequently, the electronic quality of the multi-crystalline silicon improved significantly leading to high photovoltaic quantum efficiency response. This low-cost stain etching-based PS nanostructures process could potentially be applied in the photovoltaic cell technology and applications.