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Ultrafast Thermal Plasma Preparation of Solid Si Films with Potential Application in Photovoltaic Cells: A Parametric Study

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Abstract

An innovative method, namely ultrafast plasma surface melting, is developed to fabricate solid films of silicon with very high rates (150 cm2/min). The method is composed of preparing a suspension of solid particles in a volatile solvent and spreading it on a refractory substrate such as Mo. After solvent evaporation, the resulting porous layer is exposed to the flame tale of inductively coupled RF plasma to sinter and melt the surface particles and to prepare a solid film of silicon. It is shown that by controlling the flow dynamics and heat transfer around the substrate, and managing the kinetic parameters (i.e., exposure time, substrate transport speed, and reaction kinetics) in the reactor, we can produce solid crystalline Si films with the potential applications in photovoltaic cells industry. The results indicate that the optimum formation conditions with a film thickness of 250-700 μm is when the exposure time in the plasma is in the range of 5-12.5 s for a 100 × 50 mm large layer. By combining the Fourier’s law of conduction with the experimental measurements, we obtained an effective heat diffusivity and developed a model to obtain heat diffusion in the porous layer exposed to the plasma. The model further predicts the minimum and maximum exposure time for the substrate in the plasma flame as a function of material properties, the porous layer thickness and of the imposed heat flux.

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Notes

  1. Any refractory material stable in high temperature reductive environment can be used instead of Mo substrate.

  2. Substrate speed, substrate to torch distance, plasma power, and relative velocity of plasma gas over the substrate are critical parameters that determine if we obtain sintered or melted silicon.

  3. Note that the porosity of the dried layer before scanning by plasma flame is about 50%.

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Acknowledgments

The authors highly appreciate the financial support of CEA (Grenoble, France) and NanoQuébec (Quebec, Canada). The support of the plasma laboratory technicians, Francis Barrette and of the mechanical technician Patrice Poulin through Plasma-Quebec grant is acknowledged. The collaboration of OPPUS group of the chemical engineering department for using their system for performing FluentTR simulations is well appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada

    Behnam Mostajeran Goortani & François Gitzhofer

  2. Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA), Grenoble, France

    Etienne Bouyer & Mehdi Mousavi

Authors
  1. Behnam Mostajeran Goortani
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  2. François Gitzhofer
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  3. Etienne Bouyer
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  4. Mehdi Mousavi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to François Gitzhofer.

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Mostajeran Goortani, B., Gitzhofer, F., Bouyer, E. et al. Ultrafast Thermal Plasma Preparation of Solid Si Films with Potential Application in Photovoltaic Cells: A Parametric Study. J Therm Spray Tech 18, 50–57 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11666-008-9282-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11666-008-9282-1

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