The Effect of Carrier Injection Stress on Boron-Doped Amorphous Silicon Suboxide Layers Investigated by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy

• Published in: Japanese Journal of Applied Physics 2011-09, Vol.50 (9), p.095801-095801-4
• Main Authors: Lee, Sunhwa, Park, Seungman, Park, Jinjoo, Kim, Youngkuk, Yoon, Kichan, Shin, Chonghoon, Baek, Seungsin, Kim, Joondong, Lee, Youn-Jung, Yi, Junsin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0021-4922; 1347-4065
• DOI: 10.1143/JJAP.50.095801

In amorphous silicon solar cells, reducing degradation is one of the key issues in improving cell performance. The degradation of the p-layer can play an important role since it is directly related to the open circuit voltage ($V_{\text{oc}}$) and fill factor (FF) in the cells. In this study, we investigated the changes in boron-doped p-type silicon suboxide (SiO x ) layers after carrier injection stress. The boron doping level was varied by controlling B 2 H 6 gas flow rate. When these layers were degraded, the dark conductivity decay decreased from 53% to less than 5%, and the increase in activation energy decreased from 11 to 0.5% depending on the B 2 H 6 gas flow rate increase. Our improvements are explained in conjunction with the three- and four-fold coordinated boron atoms by the shift of the B 1s X-ray photoelectron spectrum. In this paper we present how to improve the stability of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film solar cells.