针对少子寿命提升的扩散工艺优化

扩散后的方块电阻以70±21/2/为准,经实验发现去PSG后的硅片少子寿命要比扩散后的硅片少子寿命高,对比通源前通氧(A扩散工艺)和不通氧(B扩散工艺)两种扩散工艺扩散的硅片在去PSG后少寿命的涨幅及对最终制成电池片的转换效率的影响,结果表明,A扩散工艺的硅片比B扩散工艺的硅片在去PSG后的少子寿命增量更大,平均增量可达2.50μs,并且最终制成的电池片效率高出0.08%,短路电流增加0.012A,也更具稳定性。:     

多晶硅太阳电池低温变温扩散工艺的优化

采用少子寿命测试仪对扩散前后的硅片少子寿命进行了分析,当扩散后的方块电阻控制在55～65Ω时,低温变温扩散工艺处理的硅片少子寿命最高达到12.18μs,低温恒温扩散工艺处理的硅片少子寿命为10.67μs,高温恒温扩散工艺处理的硅片少子寿命为8.20μs。低温变温扩散工艺处理的太阳电池分别比传统的低温恒温扩散工艺处理和高温恒温扩散工艺处理的太阳电池转换效率提高0.79%和0.42%。     

n型单晶硅衬底少子寿命对n-PERC电池性能的影响

采用PC1D模拟软件模拟不同少子寿命的硅片条件下电阻率、扩散方块电阻、结深对n-PERC电池性能的影响。结果表明,随着硅片少子寿命的延长,电池效率提高。通过对实际生产中少子寿命和硅片径向不均匀度的研究,得出n-PERC电池使用硅片的最佳少子寿命值。     

不同扩散工艺对发黑硅片的影响

主要研究电池片生产过程中不同扩散工艺、扩散温度,以及扩散方式对发黑单晶硅片产生的影响,使用光致发光测试仪测试发黑单晶硅片经过不同的扩散工艺、扩散温度、扩散方式后的PL图。结果表明,电池片生产工艺中一定的扩散工艺会使硅片中的发黑情况消失。     

多孔硅对多晶硅太阳电池中缺陷和杂质的吸除效应

吸杂是减少硅中杂质和缺陷，提高多晶硅太阳电池效率的一种有效手段。本文比较了用三种吸杂方式对多晶硅进行处理的结果和影响：多孔硅吸杂，磷吸杂，多孔硅结合磷吸杂。三种吸杂方式都能明显提高多晶硅的少子寿命。在此基础上研究了多孔硅吸杂的工艺，发现多孔硅吸杂的效果随退火的温度和时间影响比较大，在800℃氮气气氛下退火3h，多晶硅的少子寿命能由原来的1．4μs提高到25．6μs。相比之下，多孔硅吸杂工艺简单，更适合工业生产。     

变温磷吸杂对多晶硅性能的影响

用微波光电导衰减仪(μ-PCD)研究了不同温度和时间的恒温和变温磷吸杂处理对铸造多晶硅片电学性能的影响。实验发现:变温吸杂明显优于恒温吸杂,特别是对原生高质量多晶硅;其优化的变温磷吸杂工艺为1000℃/0.5h 700℃/1.5h;而在高温恒温吸杂中,多晶硅少子寿命值反而显著下降。实验现象表明:磷吸杂效果主要是与过渡族金属的溶解、扩散和分凝有关。     

UMG多晶硅片的少子寿命

利用微波光电导衰减方法,研究磷吸杂、热氧化以及氮化硅钝化后快速热退火等工艺对物理冶金法制备的UMG硅片少子寿命的影响。实验发现:磷吸杂可有效改善冶金法硅片的少子寿命,其优化的条件是950℃处理4h;经热氧化处理后,少子寿命有所下降;氮化硅钝化后快速热退火处理可提高少子寿命,其优化的条件为800℃退火30s。     

太阳电池工艺中链式扩散与管式扩散对比研究

简要介绍链式和管式扩散的基本原理,并通过实验,给出扩散后硅片表面磷浓度、pn结结深、方阻不均匀度和电池片电性能等方面的对比分析,验证相比于管式扩散,链式扩散所具有的优劣势。链式扩散在拥有提高产量、降低生产成本和减少环境污染的优势条件下,虽然开路电压略有降低,但电池片光电转换效率仍能和采用传统管式扩散工艺制备的电池片相持平,技术水平已适用于大规模产业化生产。     

氮化硅薄膜对硅片背表面的钝化作用

采用等离子体增强化学沉积的方法(PECVD),在低衬体温度下制备不同厚度的双面氮化硅薄膜,通过准稳态电导法(QSSPCD)测试non-diffused和diffused硅片沉积不同厚度双面氮化硅薄膜烧结前后的少子寿命,研究发现,氮化硅薄膜厚度在17 nm左右的时候,背面钝化效果有所下降,超过26 nm的时候,效果基本一致.non-diffused烧结后的少子寿命下降很大,而diffused与之相反.结果表明,采用氮化硅作为背面钝化介质膜,可以改善材料的少子寿命,背面钝化膜可以选择在26～75 nm之间.     

杂质和缺陷对铸造多晶硅寿命分布的影响

铸造多晶硅的原生少子寿命沿晶锭生长方向呈倒U字型分布,对应于硅锭体内缺陷和主要杂质的规律性分布.硅锭中部Fe浓度低,微缺陷较少,对应的体寿命相对较高.硅锭底部高浓度的O、Fe杂质及高密度微缺陷导致了该区域体寿命偏低;硅锭顶部存在高浓度的C、Fe杂质及大量微缺陷,尤其是高密度位错与铁的相互作用导致该区域体寿命偏低.大量沉淀和结构缺陷并存使得晶锭底部和顶部的材料难以通过吸杂和钝化来改善少子寿命.     

Improved phosphorous gettering of multicrystalline silicon

The gettering during an emitter diffusion in multicrystalline silicon is improved by adding a low-temperature tail to the standard diffusion. The tail keeps the emitter sheet resistance within the usable range for solar cells. An increase in minority carrier lifetime by a factor ten is obtained. Decrease in recombination activity of grain boundaries and decrease in interstitial iron concentration are mainly responsible for this improved lifetime. The proposed mechanisms for this improvement are: reduction of size of precipitates because of the longer duration, possibly assisted by beneficial changes in thermodynamics and kinetics of the gettering because of the low temperature.     

Application of phosphorus diffusion gettering process on upgraded metallurgical grade Si wafers and solar cells

Although phosphorus (P) diffusion gettering process has been wildly used to improve the performance of Si solar cells in photovoltaic technology, it is a new attempt to apply P diffusion gettering process to upgraded metallurgical grade silicon (UMG-Si) wafers with the purity of 99.999%. In this paper, improvements on the electrical properties of UMG-Si wafers and solar cells were investigated with the application of P diffusion gettering process. To enhance the improvements, the gettering parameters were optimized on the aspects of gettering temperature, gettering duration and POCl₃ flow rate, respectively. As we expected, the electrical properties of both multicrystalline Si (multi-Si) and monocrystalline Si (mono-Si) wafers were significantly improved. The average minority carrier lifetime increased from 0.35 μs to nearly about 2.7 μs for multi-Si wafers and from 4.21 μs to 5.75 μs for mono-Si wafers, respectively. Accordingly, the average conversion efficiency of the UMG-Si solar cells increased from 5.69% to 7.03% for multi-Si solar cells (without surface texturization) and from 13.55% to 14.55% for mono-Si solar cells, respectively. The impurity concentrations of as-grown and P-gettered UMG-Si wafers were determined quantitively so that the mechanism of P diffusion gettering process on UMG-Si wafers and solar cells could be further understood. The results show that application of P diffusion gettering process has a great potential to improve the electrical properties of UMG-Si wafers and thus the conversion efficiencies of UMG-Si solar cells.     

Extended high temperature Al gettering for improvement and homogenization of minority carrier diffusion lengths in multicrystalline Si

Multicrystalline Si for photovoltaic applications is a very inhomogeneous material with localized regions of high dislocation density and large impurity and precipitate concentrations which limit solar cell efficiency by acting as carrier recombination sites. Due to slow dissolution of precipitates in multicrystalline Si, these regions cannot be improved by conventional P and Al gettering treatments for removal of metal impurities which give good results for single crystal Si. It is shown that an extended high temperature Al gettering treatment can improve minority carrier diffusion lengths in these low quality regions and homogenize the electrical properties of multicrystalline Si wafers.     

Laser enhanced gettering of silicon substrates

One challenge to the use of lightly-doped, high efficiency emitters on multicrystalline silicon wafers is the poor gettering efficiency of the diffusion processes used to fabricate them. With the photovoltaic industry highly reliant on heavily doped phosphorus diffusions as a source of gettering, the transition to selective emitter structures would require new alternative methods of impurity extraction. In this paper, a novel laser based method for gettering is investigated for its impact on commercially available silicon wafers used in the manufacturing of solar cells. Direct comparisons between laser enhanced gettering (LasEG) and lightly-doped emitter diffusion gettering demonstrate a 45% absolute improvement in bulk minority carrier lifetime when using the laser process. Although grain boundaries can be effective gettering sites in multicrystalline wafers, laser processing can substantially improve the performance of both grain boundary sites and intra-grain regions. This improvement is correlated with a factor of 6 further decrease in interstitial iron concentrations. The removal of such impurities from multicrystalline wafers using the laser process can result in intra-grain enhancements in implied open-circuit voltage of up to 40 mV. In instances where specific dopant profiles are required for a diffusion on one surface of a solar cell, and the diffusion process does not enable effective gettering, LasEG may enable improved gettering during the diffusion process.     

Gettering impurities from crystalline silicon by phosphorus diffusion using a porous silicon layer

The possible benefits of phosphorus-based gettering applied to crystalline silicon wafers have been evaluated. The gettering process is achieved by forming porous silicon (PS) layers on both sides of the Si wafers. The PS layers were formed by the stain-etching technique, and phosphorus diffusion using liquid POCl₃-based source was done on both sides of the Si wafer. The realized phosphorus/PS/Si/PS/phosphorus structure undergoes a heat treatment in an infrared furnace under an O₂/N₂ controlled atmosphere. This heat treatment allows phosphorus to diffuse throughout the PS layer and to getter eventual metal impurities towards the phosphorus doped PS layer. The gettering effect was evaluated using four probe points, Hall effect measurements and the light beam induced current (LBIC) technique. These techniques enable to measure the density and the mobility of the majority carrier and the minority carrier diffusion length (L_d) of the Si substrate. We noticed that the best gettering is achieved at 900 °C for 90 min of heat treatment. After gettering impurities, we found an apparent enhancement of the mobility and the minority carrier diffusion length as compared to the reference substrate.     

P/A1 co-gettering effectiveness in various polycrystalline silicon

The various polycrystalline silicon materials (cast ingots, ribbons) which are commercially available for the solar cells manufacturing differ very much among themselves due to the different growth processes. The resulting microstructure and impurity content will influence differently the material characteristics during thermal treatments inherent to the device manufacturing. As the gettering efficiency depends on the kind of polycrystalline material, the variations observed in the optimal gettering conditions or passivation will be discussed. In this paper, we compare the performances of various types of polycrystalline silicon upon classical and rapid thermal-process-induced co-diffusion of phosphorus and aluminium. We show that a large bulk minority carrier diffusion length enhancement occurs in the case of co-diffusion when compared to the separate diffusion of phosphorus and aluminium.     

Electrical properties of multicrystalline silicon produced by electromagnetic casting process: Degradation and improvement

The electrical properties of boron-doped multicrystalline silicon for photovoltaic applications, elaborated by the cold crucible pulling process, are studied by the photoconductivity decay method and the electron beam-induced current measurement technique. The bulk lifetime mapping of the minority carriers in the as-grown silicon wafers is drawn up using both the techniques. Moreover, the consequence of phosphorus doping on the recombination properties of extended defects are studied using the EBIC measurements. Two different treatments are investigated in order to improve the electrical properties of the as-grown silicon wafers: (a) thermal phosphorus diffusion, for which the gettering efficiency is determined by the different treatment parameters; (b) remote plasma hydrogen passivation which leads to increase of the minority carrier lifetime.     

The influence of annealing conditions on the efficiency of phosphorous gettering in CZ-Si for solar cell applications

The effect of the annealing ambient on the efficiency of the phosphorous gettering process for Czochralski (CZ) silicon wafers is investigated in this paper. Phosphorous is diffused from a POCl₃ source at different temperatures into single-crystal p-type silicon wafers having a resistivity of around 1 ohm/cm. This is followed by an additional heat treatment in either oxidizing (wet and dry oxide) or in inert (argon) ambient. The laser microwave photoconductivity decay method is used to monitor the changes in the minority carrier lifetime after the phosphorous diffusion and the subsequent annealing. Furthermore, solar cells are fabricated on the treated samples in order to correlate the lifetime measurements with the illuminated I-V characteristics of the cells.     

Recovery of minority carrier lifetime in low-cost multicrystalline silicon

Lifetime of minority carriers has been widely identified to be the key material parameter determining the conversion efficiency of pn-junction silicon solar cells. Impurities and defects in the silicon crystal lattice reduce the charge carrier lifetime and thus limit the performance of the solar cells. Removal of impurities by silicon material purification is often contradictory with low cost production of photovoltaic devices. In this paper, we present experimental results of an efficient gettering technique which can be applied to low cost processing of multicrystalline silicon solar cells without any additional process steps or compromises with optimal device design parameters. This technique is based on well-known phosphorous gettering. We have discovered that if the silicon wafers are kept in the furnace after the emitter diffusion at the 700°C, significant improvement in the lifetime will take place. At this temperature the properties of the pn-junction remain unaffected meanwhile many lifetime killers are still mobile. The time needed for this temperature program can be easily modified in order to respond to the material quality variations in substrates originating from different parts of multicrystalline ingot. Better control of lifetime can lead to higher degree of starting material utilization.