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The Effects of Porous Silicon and Silicon Nitride Treatments on the Electronic Qualities of Multicrystalline Silicon for Solar Cell Applications

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Abstract

This work used plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) at low temperatures to deposit a silicon nitride layer on multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si), both with and without porous silicon, in an attempt to enhance the multicrystalline silicon’s properties for solar cell applications. Silicon nitride has been successfully tested as a passivation and antireflection film in mc-Si. Consequently, reflectance is reduced from 40 to 7% in the 300–1200 nm wavelength range due to the change in the silicon’s morphology, while the effective carrier lifetime value for the Si substrate rose from 8 µs to 71 µs following SiNx treatment, thus benefitting a solar cell. A laser beam-induced current (LBIC) also revealed an improvement in the diffusion length of minority carriers, with it rising from 150 µm to 432 µm following SiNx treatment. Excellent results were also observed after combining porous silicon with a SiNx thin film, it increased the effective carrier lifetime to 104 µs, the diffusion length to 676 µm, the reflectance reduced to 3%, and the surface recombination velocity reduced to 1.6 cm/s. The obtained results therefore suggest that PECVD-based silicon-nitride-covered porous silicon shows promise in terms of cost-effectiveness and efficiency, thus helping to advance solar cell technology.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported and funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU) (grant number IMSIU-RG23144).

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  1. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, 11432, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Nashmi H. Alrasheedi

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Alrasheedi, N.H. The Effects of Porous Silicon and Silicon Nitride Treatments on the Electronic Qualities of Multicrystalline Silicon for Solar Cell Applications. Silicon 16, 1765–1773 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-023-02803-x

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