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- Title
Dislocation density reduction in multicrystalline silicon via cyclic annealing.
- Authors
Choi, Kwangmin; Castellanos, Sergio; Powell, Douglas Michael; Buonassisi, Tonio; Choi, Hyunjoo
- Abstract
Manufacturing processes to reduce dislocation densities in multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) solar cells could reduce the cost of photovoltaics by increasing cell efficiency with minimum additional process complexity. The present work investigates how cyclically varying temperature (stress) in mc-Si blocks can lead to dislocation-density reduction. Cyclic annealing is found to be more effective at activating immobile dislocations than isothermal annealing. Once immobile dislocations are activated, however, they are hypothesized to impede density reduction of mobile dislocations by accelerating multiplication of overall dislocations. Thus, a combined process of thermal cycling and isothermal annealing is found to provide a maximum dislocation density reduction of ∼70%, with 12 h of static annealing followed by 12 h of cyclic annealing. Dislocation etch-pit images of as-grown control and mc-Si sample after 12 h cyclic annealing followed by 12 h static annealing.
- Subjects
DISLOCATIONS in crystals; SILICON solar cells; ANNEALING of semiconductors; ISOTHERMAL processes; THERMOCYCLING; PHOTOVOLTAIC power generation
- Publication
Physica Status Solidi. A: Applications & Materials Science, 2015, Vol 212, Issue 10, p2315
- ISSN
1862-6300
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/pssa.201532233