Abstract
In this work, alkaline texturing of (100) crystalline Si and multicrystalline Si wafers in diluted KOH solution leading to pyramidal structures is studied as a function of the etching temperature. The surface morphology is investigated using Atomic Force Microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy and the surface reflectance is measured by spectrophotometry in the wavelength range 200-1200 nm. It is found that etching in diluted 1% KOH solution leads to incomplete surface texturing when the etching temperature is equal to 70°C. The optimum etching temperature is found to be in the range 80-85°C which results in a minimum surface reflectance for crystalline silicon covered with an antireflection coating of 0.8%, with a uniform distribution over a wider wavelength range for samples that received a saw damage removal in 30% KOH solution prior to texturing. On the other hand, the optimum etching temperature shifts to the higher range 85-95°C for multicrystalline silicon surface with a minimum reflectance of 4.6% with ARC.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Alvi, P. A., Meel, V. S., Sarita, K., Akhtar, J., Lal, K. M., Azam, A. & Naqvi, S. A. H. 2008. A study on anisotropic etching of (100) Silicon in a aqueous KOH solution. International Journal of Chemical Sciences 6(3): 1168–1176.
Campbell, P. & Green, M. A. 1987. Light trapping properties of pyramidally textured surfaces. Journal of Applied Physics 62: 243–249.
Dekkers, H., Duerinckx, F., Szlufcik, J. & Nijs, J. 2000. Silicon surface texturing in chlorine plasma. Proceedings of the 16th EC PVSEC, Glasgow: 1532–1535.
Dekkers, H., Duerinckx, F., Szlufcik, J. & Nijs, J. 2000. Silicon surface texturing by reactive ion etching. Opto-Electronics Review 8: 311–316.
Dobrzanski, L. A. & Drygala, A. 2008. Surface texturing of multi-crystalline silicon solar cells. Journal of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering 31: 77–82.
Fan, L. S., Tai, Y .C. & Muller, R.S. 1988. Integrated movable micromechanical structures for sensors and actuators. IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices ED-35: 724–730
Finne, R. M. & Klein, D. L. 1967. A water-amine-complexing agent system for etching solution. Journal of Electrochemical Society 114: 965–970.
Glembocki, O. J., Palik, E.D., de Guel, G. R & Kendall, G. L. 1991. Hydration model for the molarity dependence of the etch rate of Si in aqueous alkali hydroxides. Journal of Electrochemical Society 138: 1055–1063.
Hylton, J. D., Kinderman, R., Burgers, A. R., Sinke, W. C. & Bressers, P. M. M. C. 1996. Uniform pyramid formation on alkaline-etched polished monocrystalline (100) silicon wafers. Progress in Photovoltaic Research and Applications 4: 435–438.
Hylton, J. D., Burgers, A. R. & Sinke, W. C. 2004. Alkaline etching for reflectance reduction in multicrystalline silicon solar cells. Journal of Electrochemical Society 151(6): G408–G427.
Kendall, D. L. 1979. vertical etching of silicon at very high aspect ratios. Annual Review of Materials Science 9: 373–403.
Kendall, D. L., & de Guel, G.R. 1985. in “Micromachining and micro packaging of transducers”, edited by Fung, C.D., Cheung, P. W., Ko, W.H., & Fleming, D.G., Elsevier, Amsterdam: 107–124.
Kern, W. 1993. editor, Handbook of Semiconductor Wafer Cleaning Technology, Noyes Publications
Kim, H., Park, S., Kang, B., Kim, S., Tark, S. J., Kim, D. & Dahiwale, S. S. 2013. Effect of texturing process involving saw-damage etching on crystalline silicon solar cells. Applied surface Science 284: 133–137
King, D. L. & Buck, M. E. 1991. Experimental optimization of an anisotropic etching process for random texturization of silicon solar cells. Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, New York 1: 303.
Li, Y., Li, Z., Zhao, Y. & Lennon, A.J. 2012. Modelling of light trapping in acidic-textured multicrystalline silicon wafers. International Journal of Photo energy 2012: Article ID 369101, 1–8.
Palik, E. D., Gray, H. F. & Klein, P. B. 1983. A Raman study of etching silicon in aqueous KOH. Journal of Electrochemical Society 130: 956–959
Palik, E. D., Bermudez, V. M. & Glembocki, O. J. 1985. Ellipsometric study of orientation – dependent etching of silicon in aqueous KOH. Journal of Electrochemical Society 132: 871–994.
Price, J. B. 1973. in “Semiconductor Silicon”, Huff, H. R. & Burgess, R. R., Editors, The Electrochemical Society Softbound Proceedings Series, Princeton, NJ: 339.
Raley, N. F., Sugiyama, Y. & van Duzer, T. 1984. (100) Silicon etch-rate dependence on boron concentration in ethylenediamine-pyrocatechol-water solutions. Journal of Electrochemical Society 131: 161–171.
Seidel, H., Csepregi, L., Heuberger, A. & Baumgartel, H. 1990. Anisotropic etching of crystalline silicon in alkaline solutions. Journal of Electrochemical Society 137: 3626.
Sethi, C., Anand, K., Walia, K. & Sood, S. C. 2012. Optimization of surface reflectance for alkaline textured monocrystalline silicon solar cell. International Journal of Computing Science and Communication Technologies 5 (1): 785–788.
Singh, P. K., Kumar, R., Lal, M., Singh, S. N. & Das, B. K. 2001. Effectiveness of anisotropic etching of silicon in aqueous alkaline solutions. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 70: 103–113.
Sopori, B. L. 1988. Reflection characteristics of textured polycrystalline silicon substrates for solar cells. Solar Cells 25: 15–26
Tan. Ss., Reed, M. L., Han, H. & Boudreau. R. 1996. Mechanism of etch hillock formation. Journal of Micro electro-mechanical System 5: 66–72.
Wijekoon, K., Kumar, P., Tanner, D., Ponnekanti, H. & Gay, C. 2011. Direct texturization of as sawed mono-crystalline silicon solar wafers: Solar cell efficiency as a function of total silicon removal. Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference: 2216–2220.
Zhou, Z. F., Huang, Q. A. & Li, W. H. 2008. Anisotropic etching of silicon in alkaline solutions: microscopic activation energy calculations for silicon atoms and its simulation applications. Proceedings of the IEEE SENSORS Conference: 470–473.
Zielke, D., Sylla, D., Neubert, T., Brendel, R. & Schmidt, J. 2012. Direct laser texturing for high-efficiency silicon solar cells. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaic PP 99: 1–6.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Open Access:
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0) which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Hajjiah, A., Zachariah, S. & Ghannam, M. Study of surface morphology and optical characterization of crystalline and multi-crystalline silicon surface textured in highly diluted alkaline solutions. J Engin Res 2, 9 (2014). https://doi.org/10.7603/s40632-014-0009-9
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7603/s40632-014-0009-9