Doped microcrystalline silicon oxide alloys for silicon‐based photovoltaics: Optoelectronic properties, chemical composition, and structure studied by advanced characterization techniques

Doped microcrystalline silicon oxide (μc‐SiO x :H) alloys attract significant attention as a functional material in photovoltaic devices. By using various advanced characterization methods, we have studied the relationship between optoelectronic properties, chemical composition, and structure of p‐type µc‐SiO x :H deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). For a wide range of compositions with varying oxygen content, we show that the dominant components are Si and a‐SiO 2 , while the fraction of suboxides is minor. The μc‐SiO x :H material with sufficient oxygen content ( x  = 0.35) exhibits an enlarged optical gap E 04  > 2.2 eV and sufficiently high dark conductivity >10 −6  S cm −1 ; the crystalline silicon fraction has a filament‐like shape (with a typical width of around 10 nm) forming a branch‐like structure elongated in the growth direction over several hundreds of nanometers.