• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2019

Light induced degradation is one of the major research challenges of hydrogenated amorphous silicon related thin film silicon solar cells. Amorphous silicon shows creation of metastable defect states, originating from elevated concentration of dangling bonds during light exposure. The metastable defect states work as recombination centers, and mostly affects quality of intrinsic layer in solar cells. In this paper we present results of light induced degradation in thin film silicon solar cells and discussion on physical origin, mechanism and practical solutions of light induced degradation in thin film silicon solar cells. In-situ light-soaking IV measurement techniques are presented. We also present thin film silicon material with silicon nano-quantum dots embedded within amorphous matrix, which shows superior stability during light-soaking. Our results suggest that solar cell using silicon nano-quantum dots in abosrber layer shows superior stability under light soaking, compared to the conventional amorphous silicon solar cell.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.299-306
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• 1998

Crystallization of the amorphous silicon needs activation. Thermal energy through laser annealing, furnace annealing and rapid thermal process (RTP) has been convinced to crystallize the amorphous silicon thin film. It is expected that some other type of energy like mechanical energy can help to crystallize the amorphous silicon thin film. In this study, mechanical energy through wet blasting of silica slurry and silicon ion implantation has been applied to the amorphous silicon thin film deposited with LPCVD technique. RTP was employed for the annealing of this mechanically-damaged amorphous silicon thin film. For the characterization of the crystallized silicon thin film, XRD and Raman analysis were conducted. In this study, it is shown that the mechanical damage is effective to enhance the crystallization of amorphous silicon thin film.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.477-481
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• 2004

High quality polycrystalline silicon is very critical part of the high quality thin film transistor(TFT) for display devices. Metal induced lateral crystallization(MILC) is one of the most successful technologies to crystallize the amorphous silicon at low temperature(below $550^{\circ}C$) and uses conventional and large glass substrate. In this study, we observed that the MILC behavior changed with abrupt variation of the amorphous silicon active pattern width. We explained these phenomena with the novel MILC mechanism model. The 10 nm thick Ni layers were deposited on the glass substrate having various amorphous silicon patterns. Then, we annealed the sample at $550^{\circ}C$ with rapid thermal annealing(RTA) apparatus and measured the crystallized length by optical microscope. When MILC progress from narrow-width-area(the width was $w_2$) to wide-width-area(the width was $w_1$), the MILC rate decreased dramatically and was not changed for several hours(incubation time). Also the incubation time increased as the ratio, $w_1/w_2$, get larger. We can explain these phenomena with the tensile stress that was caused by volume shrinkage due to the phase transformation from amorphous silicon to crystalline silicon.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.10
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• pp.1702-1705
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• 2016

We propose a novel hydrogen-reduced p-type amorphous silicon oxide buffer layer between $TiO_2$ antireflection layer and p-type silicon window layer of silicon thin film solar cells. This new buffer layer can protect underlying the $TiO_2$ by suppressing hydrogen plasma, which could be made by excluding $H_2$ gas introduction during plasma deposition. Amorphous silicon oxide thin film solar cells with employing the new buffer layer exhibited better conversion efficiency (8.10 %) compared with the standard cell (7.88 %) without the buffer layer. This new buffer layer can be processed in the same p-chamber with in-situ mode before depositing main p-type amorphous silicon oxide window layer. Comparing with state-of-the-art buffer layer of AZO/p-nc-SiOx:H, our new buffer layer can be processed with cost-effective, much simple process based on similar device performances.

• Proceedings of the Korea Association of Crystal Growth Conference
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• 1997.06a
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• pp.243-246
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• 1997

A new technique for low temperature crystallization of amorphous silicon, called field aided lateral crystallization(FALC) was attempted. To demonstrate the concept of FALC, thin layer of nickel(30${\AA}$) was deposited on top of amorphous silicon film and the electric field was applied during the crystallization. The effects of electric field on the crystallization behavior of amorphous silicon film were investigated.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.08b
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• pp.1308-1311
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• 2007

Leakage current produced by backside illumination on bottom-gated amorphous silicon thin film transistor has been investigated. The experimental results show that the leakage current of bottomgated structure is significantly dependent on the shape of amorphous silicon pattern. A proper design of amorphous silicon pattern has been suggested in viewpoint of reducing the leakage current as well as mass production.

• Journal of Korean Vacuum Science & Technology
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.49-54
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• 1998

The effect of deposition paratmeters on the solid-phase crystallization of amorphous silicon films deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition has been investigated by x-ray diffraction. The amorphous silicon films were prepared on Si(100) wafers using SiH4 gas with and without H2 dilution at the substrate temperatures between 12$^{\circ}C$ and 38$0^{\circ}C$. The R. F. powers and the deposition pressures were also varied. After crystallizing at $600^{\circ}C$ for 24h, the films exhibited (111), (220), and (311) x-ray diffraction peaks. The (111) peak intensity increased as the substrate temperature decreased, and the H dilution suppressed the crystallization. Increasing R.F. powers within the limits of etching level and increasing deposition pressures also have enhanced the peak intensity. The peak intensity was closely related to the deposition rate, which may be an indirect indicator of structural disorder in amorphous silicon films. Our results are consistent with the fact that an increase of the structural disorder I amorphous silicon films enhances the grain size in the crystallized films.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.20-24
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• 2014

Joule heat is generated by applying an electric filed to a conductive layer located beneath or above the amorphous silicon film, and is used to raise the temperature of the silicon film to crystallization temperature. An electric field was applied to an indium tin oxide (ITO) conductive layer to induce Joule heating in order to carry out the crystallization of amorphous silicon. Polycrystalline silicon was produced within the range of a millisecond. To investigate the kinetics of Joule-heating induced crystallization (JIC) solid phase crystallization was conducted using amorphous silicon films deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition and using tube furnace in nitrogen ambient. Microscopic and macroscopic uniformity of crystallinity of JIC poly-Si was measured to have better uniformity compared to that of poly-Si produced by other methods such as metal induced crystallization and Excimer laser crystallization.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.79-83
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• 2009

In this study, the characteristics of amorphous silicon etching for the formation of gate electrodes have been evaluated at the variation of several process parameters. When total flow rates composed of $Cl_2/HBr/O_2$ gas mixtures increased, the etch rate of amorphous silicon layer increased, but critical dimension (CD) bias was not notably changed regardless of total flow rate. As the amount of HBr in the mixture gas became larger, amorphous silicon etch rate was reduced by the low reactivity of Br species. In the case of increasing oxygen flow rate, etch selectivity was increased due to the reduction of oxide etch rate, enhancing the stability of silicon gate etching process. However, gate electrodes became more sloped according to the increase of oxygen flow rate. Higher source power induced the increase of amorphous silicon etch rate and CD bias, and higher bias power had a tendency to increase the etch rate of amorphous silicon and oxide.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.1013-1019
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• 2007

Amorphous silicon and silicon-nitride films were deposited using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method at $150^{\circ}C$. As fraction of $H_2$ in source gas was increased, characteristics of low-temperature silicon-nitride films approached those of conventional high-temperature films; the refractive index approached 1.9 and the ratio of nitrogen-hydrogen bonds to silicon-hydrogen bonds increased. And also, as fraction of $H_2$ in source gas was increased, characteristics of low-temperature silicon films approached those of conventional high-temperature films; refractive index and optical band gap approached 4.2 and 1.8 eV, and $[Si-H]/([Si-H]+[Si-H_2])$ increased. Lower RF power and process-pressure made the amorphous silicon films to be better properties. Increase of $H_2$ ratio seemed as the common factor to get reliable amorphous silicon and silicon-nitride films for thin-film-transistors (TFTs) at low temperature.