Abstract
Thin film polycrystalline silicon (pc-Si) on flexible metallic substrates is promising for low cost production of photovoltaic solar cells. One of the attractive methods to produce pc-Si solar cells consists in thickening a large-grained seed layer by epitaxy. In this work, the deposited seed layer is made by aluminium induced crystallization (AIC) of an amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin film on metallic substrates (Ni/Fe alloy) initially coated with a tantalum nitride (TaN) conductive diffusion barrier layer. Effect of the thermal budget on the AIC grown pc-Si seed layer was investigated in order to optimize the process (i.e. the quality of the pc-Si thin film). Structural and optical characterizations were carried out using optical microscopy, μ -Raman and Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD). At optimal thermal annealing conditions, the continuous AIC grown pc-Si thin film showed an average grain size around 15 μ m. The grains were preferably (001) oriented which is favorable for its epitaxial thickening. This work proves the feasibility of the AIC method to grow large grains pc-Si seed layer on TaN coated metal substrates. These results are, in terms of grains size, the finest obtained by AIC on metallic substrates.
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