Thin-Film Polycrystalline Si Solar Cell on Glass Substrate Fabricated by a Novel Low Temperature Process

Abstract

Thin film polycrystalline Si solar cells on glass substrates were fabricated by the excimer laser annealing of heavily boron doped a-Si and the subsequent deposition of polycrystalline Si on them by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition at low temperature. The resistivity of the heavily boron doped laser annealed polycrystalline Si film is as low as 2×10 -4 Ω·cm. The structure of the solar cell presented here is ITO/n µc-Si:H (30 nm)/p poly-Si (2 µm)/p + poly-Si (300 nm)/glass substrate, which shows reasonably high current density despite the low-temperature fabrication. The effective diffusion length of this solar cell estimated from the evaluation of the inverse quantum efficiency is more than or equal to the thickness ( 2 µm) of the solar cell.