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Study of hydrogenated AlN as an anti‐reflective coating and for the effective surface passivation of silicon
Author(s) -
Krugel Georg,
Sharma Aashish,
Wolke Winfried,
Rentsch Jochen,
Preu Ralf
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
physica status solidi (rrl) – rapid research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.786
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1862-6270
pISSN - 1862-6254
DOI - 10.1002/pssr.201307153
Subject(s) - passivation , materials science , silicon nitride , silicon , nitride , stack (abstract data type) , aluminium , photovoltaics , layer (electronics) , optoelectronics , coating , silicon oxide , composite material , photovoltaic system , electrical engineering , computer science , programming language , engineering
Stacks of aluminum oxide and silicon nitride are frequently used in silicon photovoltaics. In this Letter, we demonstrate that hydrogenated aluminum nitride can be an alternative to this dual‐layer stack. Deposited on 1 Ω cm p‐type FZ silicon, very low effective surface recombination velocities of 8 cm/s could be reached after firing at 820 °C. This excellent passivation is traced back to a high density of fixed charges at the interface of approximately –1 × 10 12 cm –2 and a very low interface defect density below 5 × 10 10 eV –1 cm –2 . Furthermore, spectral ellipsometry measurements reveal that these aluminum nitride layers have ideal optical properties for use as anti‐reflective coatings. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)