Juneja, Sucheta and Sudhakar, S. and Gope, Jhuma and Lodhi, Kalpana and Sharma, Mansi and kumar, Sushil (2015) Highly conductive boron doped micro/nanocrystalline silicon thin films deposited by VHF-PECVD for solar cell applications. Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 643. pp. 94-99. ISSN 0925-8388

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Abstract

Boron doped hydrogenated micro/nanocrystalline silicon (mu c/nc-Si:H) thin films have been deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition technique (PECVD) using silane (SiH4) diluted in argon. Diborane (B2H6) was used as the dopant gas and deposition was carried out at substrate temperature of 200 degrees C. The diborane flow (F-B) varied in the range 0.00-0.30. Here, we report the effects of B2H6 doping on electronic, optical and structural properties of hydrogenated micro/nanocrystalline silicon films. The structural properties were analyzed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The doped micro/nano crystalline silicon films presented a crystallographic orientation preferentially in the (111) and (220) plane. We resolve the deposition parameters that lead to the formation of p-type micro/nanocrystalline silicon thin films with very high value of conductivity and lower optical band gap. Correlations between structural and electrical properties were also studied. Based on temperature dependent conductivity measurements, it has been observed that the room temperature dark conductivity varies in the range 1.45 x 10 (4) Omega (1) cm (1) to 2.02 Omega (1) cm (1) for the B-doped films. Meanwhile, the corresponding value of activation energies decreased to 0.06 eV for the B-doped films, which indicates the doped mu c/nc-Si films with high conductivity can be achieved and these films prove to be a very good candidate for application in amorphous and micro/nano crystalline silicon solar cells as a p-type window layer.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Thin films Vapor deposition Photoconductivity and photovoltaics AFM X-ray diffraction
Subjects:	Chemistry > Physical Chemistry Materials Science Metallurgy & Metallurgical Engineering
Divisions:	UNSPECIFIED
Depositing User:	Dr. Rajpal Walke
Date Deposited:	23 Sep 2016 10:33
Last Modified:	23 Sep 2016 10:33
URI:	http://npl.csircentral.net/id/eprint/1848

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