EPITAXIAL GROWTH OF SILICON THIN FILMS FOR SOLAR CELLS

Abstract

Crystalline silicon thin film solar cells on glass substrates are a low cost alternative to silicon wafer cells. As an alternative to a simple furnace annealing step in which a-Si is converted to c-Si with 1 µm grains, an epitaxial crystal growth process is presented here. First a seed layer is prepared on glass by diode laser crystallization of an a-Si layer on glass to result in 100 µm grains. Then a-Si is deposited on top of the seed which is converted to c-Si by epitaxial growth. A 1.1 µm thick c-Si layer with 100 µm grains was produced in this way. The paper presents details of the epitaxial growth process.