Numerical modeling of the failure mechanisms in Si thin film anode for Li-ion batteries", Master's Thesis, 2.2 The gravimetric capacity of the ballistically deposited silicon nanocrystals and the a-silicon nanofilm over 50 cycles, compared with the capacity of graphite

Through a set of microtensile experiments, it was discovered that the resistance of a free-standing polycrystalline silicon thin film to cleavage cracking is not a material constant. Rather, it is highly dependent on the film thickness. As the film thickness changes from 1 to 10 lm, the fracture resistance increases by 20–60%, which can be attributed to the nonuniform nature of the crack front ...

General properties of thin film solar cells and panels are discussed, and compared to crystalline silicon. A state-of-the-art of thin film cells and panels is given. One thin film production technique is elaborated: screen printing and sintering. The technique and its application to CdS/CdTe cells are presented. It is shown that sophistication to the basic technique can overcome inherent shortc...

In this paper, amorphous silicon nanowires (α-SiNWs) were synthesized on (100) Si substrate with silicon oxide film by Cu catalyst-driven solid-liquid-solid mechanism (SLS) during annealing process (1080 °C for 30 min under Ar/H2 atmosphere). Micro size Cu pattern fabrication decided whether α-SiNWs can grow or not. Meanwhile, those micro size Cu patterns also controlled the position and densit...

We compare the efficiency of thin film photonic crystal solar cells consisting of conical pores and nanowires. Solving both Maxwell's equations and the semiconductor drift-diffusion in each geometry, we identify optimal junction and contact positions and study the influence of bulk and surface recombination losses on solar cell efficiency. We find that using only 1 lm of silicon, sculpted in th...

Optical characterization methods were applied to a series of microcrystalline silicon thin films and solar cells deposited by the very high frequency glow discharge technique. Bulk and surface light scattering effects were analyzed. A detailed theory for evaluation of the optical absorption coefficient a from transmittance, reflectance and absorptance ~with the help of constant photocurrent met...

Thin-film deposition on ultra-thin substrates poses unique challenges because of the potential for a dynamic response to the film stress during deposition. While theoretical studies have investigated film stress related changes in bulk substrates, little has been done to learn how stress might evolve in a film growing on a compliant substrate. We use silicon nanomembranes (SiNMs), extremely thi...

The purpose of this paper is to model the performance of thin film amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cells under AM1.5G spectral conditions. In this work, a numerical model for the investigation of thin film amorphous silicon p-i-n cells has been developed. The light absorption is treated as a non-uniform, exponentially decaying function, which also allows to use spectral ensembles to be investi...

A gradient Si-rich oxide multilayer (GSRO-ML) deposition structure is proposed to achieve super-high density Si quantum dot (QD) thin film formation while preserving QD size controllability for better photovoltaic properties. Our results indicate that the Si QD thin film using a GSRO-ML structure can efficiently increase the QD density and control the QD size. Its optical properties clearly pro...

Single particle tracking with a wide field microscope is used to study the solid liquid interface between the viscous liquid tetrakis(2-ethylhexoxy)-silane and a silicon dioxide surface. Silicon dioxide nanoparticles (5 nm diameter) marked with the fluorescent dye rhodamine 6G are used as probes. The distributions of diffusion coefficients, obtained by mean squared displacements, reveal heterog...