Browsing by Author "Tobail, Osama"

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Porous silicon for thin solar cell fabrication
(2008) Tobail, Osama; Werner, Jürgen H. (Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil.)
The thesis on hand considers the preparation and the characterization of porous silicon for the fabrication of monocrystalline silicon thin layers and solar cells. The reduction of the solar cell thickness decreases the material consumption, offers the fabrication of mechanically flexible cells, and enhances the physical properties of solar cells. Therefore, the goal of this work is to fabricate free-standing thin monocrystalline silicon solar cells. The layer transfer process, which is based on a double layer of porous silicon, provides an economical production of thin film silicon solar cells with thicknesses d between d = 20 and d = 50 µm beneath foreign superstrates. The superstrate complicates both the further processing of the cell back side and the series connection of cells. This work develops a new technique for the integrated series connection from transfer cells. This technique is based on laser machining of the transfer cells after the transfer onto the superstrate. The resulted integrated module produces 0.74 W/g. As the transfer process quality depends mainly on porous silicon structural properties, this work presents a new non-destructive method to estimate the porosity of single as well as multi layer porous silicon systems through its optical properties by means of the white-light-interferometry. This thesis applies the new method in two applications: The first application is the study of the dissolution mechanism of silicon in hydrofluoric acid during anodization. The study shows that heavily doped p+-type wafers consume three holes, while lightly doped p-type wafers consume only two holes during porous silicon formation to dissolve one silicon atom. The number of consumed holes indicates the kind of the electrochemical reaction, by which silicon atoms dissolve during the anodization. The second application is the enhancement of the lateral homogeneity of porous silicon on 6" wafer to increase the yield of the layer transfer process. The measurements agree with the two dimensional conductive medium simulation of the etching cell. The experiments together with the simulation result in a new etching setup for porous silicon production. The new setup enhances the porous silicon lateral homogeneity by about 10 % and also increases the yield Y of the layer transfer process from Y = 30 % to Y = 70 %. This thesis introduces a new technique, which produces free-standing monocrystalline silicon thin-films. This technique uses the selective formation of porous silicon on different doped silicon. Porous silicon forms on p-type regions, while n-type regions on the same wafer act as a masking layer against the electrochemical reaction. Modeling the Si/electrolyte interface shows that n-type doped islands need a higher potential than p-type silicon to flow a certain current, and hence n-type regions act as a mask during porous silicon formation. Laser doping technique enables the simple patterning of different doped regions without the need of masking or high temperature annealing steps. This technique produces patterned buried continuous cavities beneath the epitaxy layer. Separation takes place by cutting the epitaxy layer at the cavity edges. A free-standing 47.6 µm thin solar cell with efficiency \eta = 17.0 % and an area A = 1.1 cm2 is achieved by a simple back side metallization on a back surface field layer. This work deepens the understanding of porous silicon formation mechanisms and offers a new characterization method of its structural properties. A comprehensive study of the well established layer transfer process and its disadvantages leads to a new technique producing free-standing thin monocrystalline silicon layers and solar cells.