We summarize published hole transit-time measurements for hydrogenated amorphous silicon, microcrystalline silicon, and light-emitting nanoporous silicon in terms of drift mobilities and dispersion parameters. For amorphous and microcrystalline silicon, the anomalously dispersive measurements are broadly consistent with multiple-trapping by bandtail traps with an exponential distribution of ene...

–We have investigated undoped hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) p-type crystalline silicon (c-Si) structures with and without a microcrystalline silicon (c-Si) buffer layer as a potential for hetero-junction (HJ) solar cell. Hydrogenated amorphous silicon and microcrystalline silicon film have been grown by inductively coupled plasma chemical vapour deposition (ICP-CVD). Solid phase crys...

Nano-silicon is a nanostructured material in which quantum or spatial confinement is the origin of the material's luminescence. When nano-silicon is broken into colloidal crystalline nanoparticles, its luminescence can be tuned across the visible spectrum only when the sizes of the nanoparticles, which are obtained via painstaking filtration methods that are difficult to scale up because of low...

Using ab initio density functional calculations, we investigate the energetics of hydrogen in amorphous silicon. We compare a hydrogen at a silicon bond center site in a-Si to one in c-Si. In addition, we identify the energetics of the dominant traps for H in a-Si. The present calculations are used to elucidate many experiments and concepts regarding hydrogen in amorphous silicon.

UNLABELLED The solar cell structure of n-type poly-silicon/5-nm-diameter silicon nanocrystals embedded in an amorphous silicon oxycarbide matrix (30 layers)/p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon/Al electrode was fabricated on a quartz substrate. An open-circuit voltage and a fill factor of 518 mV and 0.51 in the solar cell were obtained, respectively. The absorption edge of the solar cell was 1...

The effect of ultraprecision grinding on microstructural change in silicon monocrystals, such as surface roughness and dislocation structure, was investigated both experimentally and theoretically. The study found that there exists an additional concentration of oxygen and carbon in an amorphous layer for all investigated grinding regimes with their distributions dependent on the grinding varia...

LP-CVD ZnO has been developed at IMT as front TCO for amorphous silicon p-i-n single-junction and “micromorph” (microcrystalline/amorphous silicon) tandem solar cells. In comparison with SnO2 (Asahi type U), ZnO demonstrates superior light-trapping behaviour. Applying the monolithic series connection by laser-scribing, both for amorphous single-junction and micromorph tandem cells, modules have...

LP-CVD ZnO has been developed at IMT as front TCO for a-Si:H p-i-n single-junction and “micromorph” (microcrystalline/amorphous silicon) tandem solar cells. An amorphous silicon single-junction p-i-n cell (~1 cm) with a stabilized efficiency of 9.47 % has independently been confirmed by NREL. Applying the monolithic series connection by laser-scribing, both for amorphous single-junction and mic...

Hole drift mobilities have been measured using photocarrier time-of-l-light for several hydrogenated amorphous silicon-carbon alloy specimens. We find that, as the band gap increases, the hole drift mobility remains essentially constant. The temperature and dispersion properties were broadly consistent with hole multiple trapping in the valence bandtail. In conjunction with previous drift mobil...

Vertical integration of amorphous hydrogenated silicon diodes on CMOS readout chips offers several advantages compared to standard CMOS imagers in terms of sensitivity, dynamic range and dark current while at the same time introducing some undesired transient effects leading to image lag. Performance of such sensors is here reported and their transient behaviour is analysed and compared to the ...