Effect of nickel on the lifetime of charge carriers in silicon solar cells

Abstract

It has been shown experimentally that nickel clusters on the surface of a silicon sample contain a large amount of oxygen and recombination impurities --- Cu, Fe, Cr, and so shows good gettering properties of clusters. The optimum temperature of nickel diffusion into silicon is determined as 800-850oC. Doping with impurity nickel atoms with the formation of clusters makes it possible to increase the lifetime of nonequilibrium charge carriers in the base of a solar cell by up to 2 times, while the formation of a nickel-enriched region in the face layer is more efficient. It is shown that the effect of additional doping with nickel weakly depends on the sequence of the processes of nickel diffusion and the creation of a working p-n-junction. Keywords: silicon solar cells, nickel diffusion, nonequilibrium charge carriers, gettering, p-n junction.

Diffusion of Phosphorus and Gallium from a Deposited Layer of Gallium Phosphide into Silicon

“…Gallium-phosphorus binary complexes, forming in rather large concentrations, can significantly affect the electrophysical, optical and photovoltaic properties of silicon. Estimation of this influence requires an integrated study of materials having rather a high concentration of molecular complexes such as Si 2 Ga − P + in the silicon lattice [19,20].…”

Radiation resistance of nickel-doped silicon solar cells

“…Then p−n junction was produced by phosphorus diffusion towards the " nickel" side of the wafer at T = 1000 • C during t = 30 min. After the diffusion, additional thermal annealing was carried out at the optimum temperature [16] T = 750−800 • C during t = 30 min.…”

“…It is reported in [14][15][16][17][18][19] that doping of silicon SC with impurity nickel atoms ensures the improvement of SC performance. However, radiation hardness of such SCs has not been studied.…”

Comparative study of photocells based on silicon doped with nickel by various methods

“…The studies [9][10][11][12][13] showed, that doping of a siliconbased photocell with impurity nickel atoms by diffusion method leads to an improvement in its efficiency due to the gettering properties of nickel clusters. However this method (diffusion doping of silicon with nickel) to improve the photocell parameters requires several technological operations, such as chemical cleaning before and after nickel diffusion, nickel spraying (or nickel chemical deposition), diffusion annealing, etc.…”

“…However this method (diffusion doping of silicon with nickel) to improve the photocell parameters requires several technological operations, such as chemical cleaning before and after nickel diffusion, nickel spraying (or nickel chemical deposition), diffusion annealing, etc. [5,7,9].…”