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Hydrogenated Nano-/Micro-Crystalline Silicon Thin-Films for Thermoelectrics

  • Topical Collection: International Conference on Thermoelectrics 2017
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Abstract

Thermoelectric technology has not yet been able to reach full-scale market penetration partly because most commercial materials employed are scarce/costly, environmentally unfriendly and in addition provide low conversion efficiency. The necessity to tackle some of these hurdles leads us to investigate the suitability of n-type hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si: H) in the fabrication of thermoelectric devices, produced by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD), which is a mature process of proven scalability. This study reports an approach to optimise the thermoelectric power factor (PF) by varying the dopant concentration by means of post-annealing without impacting film morphology, at least for temperatures below 550°C. Results show an improvement in PF of more than 80%, which is driven by a noticeable increase of carrier mobility and Seebeck coefficient in spite of a reduction in carrier concentration. A PF of 2.08 × 10−4 W/mK2 at room temperature is reported for n-type films of 1 μm thickness, which is in line with the best values reported in recent literature for similar structures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanomaterials Lab, School of Engineering & Physical Science, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    E. Acosta, N. M. Wight & N. S. Bennett

  2. IEK-5 Photovoltaik, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany

    V. Smirnov

  3. Centre for Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy, Institute of Petroleum Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    J. Buckman

Authors
  1. E. Acosta
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  2. N. M. Wight
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  3. V. Smirnov
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  4. J. Buckman
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  5. N. S. Bennett
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Correspondence to E. Acosta.

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Acosta, E., Wight, N.M., Smirnov, V. et al. Hydrogenated Nano-/Micro-Crystalline Silicon Thin-Films for Thermoelectrics. J. Electron. Mater. 47, 3077–3084 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-017-5977-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-017-5977-8

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