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Experimental Investigation of Influence of Electrolytic Solution in Porous Silicon Formation for Solar Energy Conversion

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Abstract

The goal of this research is to give a low-cost approach for increasing the efficiency of solar cells. The low cost, high resistive p- type silicon wafer is used here to fabricate the porous silicon. The electrochemical etching parameters like electrolytic solution, etching rate, current density, are modified to reduce the reflectivity of the wafer. Here, the work is highly focused to study the behavior of porous silicon while adding Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as a catalyst with the electrolytic solution 48% hydrofluoric acid and N–N dimethylformamide under 4 mA/cm2 towards the reflectivity of porous silicon. Pore morphology and porosity were characterized by scanning electron microscope and gravimetric methods. Optical properties of the fabricated porous silicon were analyzed by spectrofluorometer and Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. Reflectance, bandgap, porosity and refractive index has been determined by substituting the results. From the obtained results, it is shown that after the addition of the catalyst, the diameter of the pores is increased and the band gap is also increased as 2 eV which leads to the high anti reflectance property. While analyzing the reflectance spectrum, the obtained average reflectance is 2.1(%). Hence, it is proved that porous silicon synthesized with H2O2 catalyst can be used as a solar cell.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Centre for Micro Nano Design and Fabrication, Saveetha Engineering College, Chennai for providing the facility to successfully complete this project.

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No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Saveetha Engineering College, Thandalam, Chennai, 602105, India

    D. Lingaraja, S. Praveen Kumar, G. Dinesh Ram & S. Ramya

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  1. D. Lingaraja
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  2. S. Praveen Kumar
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  3. G. Dinesh Ram
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  4. S. Ramya
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Contributions

D Lingaraja – Characterized the photoluminescence results, scanning electron microscope, UV-DRS results and wrote the entire manuscript.

S. Praveen Kumar—Complete guidance and reviewed the entire manuscript.

G. Dinesh Ram—Reviewed the entire manuscript.

S. Ramya—Reviewed the entire manuscript.

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Correspondence to S. Praveen Kumar.

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Lingaraja, D., Kumar, S.P., Ram, G.D. et al. Experimental Investigation of Influence of Electrolytic Solution in Porous Silicon Formation for Solar Energy Conversion. Silicon 15, 3855–3862 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-023-02305-w

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