The a-Si:H/c-Si hetero-junction (HJ) solar cells have a variety of advantages in efficiency and fabrication processes. It has already demonstrated about 23% in R&D scale and more than 20% in commercial production. In order to further reduce the fabrication cost of HJ solar cells, fabrication processes should be simplified more than conventional methods which accompany separate processes of front and rear sides of the cells. In this study, we propose a simultaneous deposition of intrinsic thin a-Si:H layers on both sides of a wafer by dual hot wire CVD (HWVCD). In this system, wafers are located between tantalum wires, and a-Si:H layers are simultaneously deposited on both sides of the wafer. By using this scheme, we can reduce the process steps and time and improve the efficiency of HJ solar cells by removing surface contamination of the wafers. We achieved about 16% efficiency in HJ solar cells incorporating intrinsic a-Si:H buffers by dual HWCVD and p/n layers by PECVD.

Changes in surface morphology and roughness of dc sputtered ZnO:Al/Ag back reflectors by varying the deposition temperature and their influence on the performance of flexible silicon thin film solar cells were systematically investigated. By increasing the deposition temperature from 25˚C to 500˚C, the grain size of Ag thin films increased from 100 nm to 1000 nm and the grain size distribution became irregular, which resulted in an increment of surface roughness from 6.6 nm to 46.6 nm. Even after the 100 nm thick ZnO:Al film deposition, the surface morphology and roughness of the ZnO:Al/Ag double structured back reflectors were the same as those of the Ag layers, meaning that the ZnO:Al films were deposited conformally on the Ag films without unnecessary changes in the surfacefeatures. The diffused reflectance of the back reflectors improved significantly with the increasing grain size and surface roughness of the Ag films, and in particular, an enhanced diffused reflectance in the long wavelength over 800 nm was observed in the Ag back reflectors deposited at 500˚C, which had an irregular grain size distribution of 200-1000 nm and large surface roughness. The improved light scattering properties on the rough ZnO:Al/Ag back reflector surfaces led to an increase of light trapping in the solar cells, and this resulted in a noticeable improvement in the Jsc values from 9.94 mA/cm2 for the flat Ag back reflector at 25˚C to 13.36 mA/cm2 for the rough one at 500˚C. A conversion efficiency of 7.60% (Voc = 0.93, Jsc = 13.36 mA/cm2, FF = 61%) was achieved in the flexible silicon thin film solar cells at this moment.

Silicon quantum dots (Si QDs) in a superlattice for high efficiency tandem solar cells were fabricated by magnetron rf sputtering and their characteristics were investigated. SiC/Si1-xCx superlattices were deposited by co-sputtering of Si and C targets and annealed at 1000˚C for 20 minutes in a nitrogen atmosphere. The Si QDs in Si-rich layers were verified by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction. The size of the QDs was observed to be 3-6 nm through high resolution TEM. Some crystal Si and -SiC peaks were clearly observed in the grazing incident X-ray diffractogram. Raman spectroscopy in the annealed sample showed a sharp peak at 516 cm-1 which is an indication of Si QDs. Based on the Raman shift the size of the QD was estimated to be 4-6 nm. The volume fraction of Si crystals was calculated to be about 33%. The change of the FT-IR absorption spectrum from a Gaussian shape to a Lorentzian shape also confirmed the phase transition from an amorphous phase before annealing to a crystalline phase after annealing. The optical absorption coefficient also decreased, but the optical band gap increased from 1.5 eV to 2.1 eV after annealing. Therefore, it is expected that the optical energy gap of the QDs can be controlled with growth and annealing conditions.

This paper investigates the dependence of a-Si:H/c-Si passivation and heterojunction solar cell performances on various cleaning processes of silicon wafers. It is observed that the passivation quality of a-Si:H thin-films on c-Si wafers depends highly on the initial H-termination properties of the wafer surface. The effective minority carrier lifetime (MCLT) of highly H-terminated wafer is beneficial for obtaining high quality passivation of a-Si:H/c-Si. The wafers passivated by p(n)-doped a-Si:H layers have low MCLT regardless of the initial H-termination quality. On the other hand, the MCLT of wafers incorporating intrinsic (i) a-Si:H as a passivation layer shows sensitive variation with initial cleaning and H-termination schemes. By applying the improved cleaning processes, we can obtain an MCLT of 100μsec after H-termination and above 600μsec after i a-Si:H thin film deposition. By adapting improved cleaning processes and by improving passivation and doped layers, we can fabricate a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cells with an active area conversion efficiency of 18.42%, which cells have an open circuit voltage of 0.670V, short circuit current of 37.31 mA/cm2 and fill factor of 0.7374. These cells show more than 20% pseudo efficiency measured by Suns-Voc with an elimination of series resistance.

Changes in the surface morphology and light scattering of textured Al doped ZnO thin films on glasssubstrates prepared by rf magnetron sputtering were investigated. As-deposited ZnO:Al films show a hightransmittance of above 80% in the visible range and a low electrical resistivity of 4.5×10-4Ω·cm. The surfacemorphology of textured ZnO:Al films are closely dependent on the deposition parameters of heater temperature,working pressure, and etching time in the etching process. The optimized surface morphology with a cratershape is obtained at a heater temperature of 350oC, working pressure of 0.5 mtorr, and etching time of 45seconds. The optical properties of light transmittance, haze, and angular distribution function (ADF) aresignificantly affected by the resulting surface morphologies of textured films. The film surfaces, havinguniformly size-distributed craters, represent good light scattering properties of high haze and ADF values.Compared with commercial Asahi U (SnO2:F) substrates, the suitability of textured ZnO:Al films as frontelectrode material for amorphous silicon thin film solar cells is also estimated with respect to electrical andoptical properties.

CdS/CuInSe2태양전지의 광흡수층인 CuInSe2박막을 In2Se3와 Cu2Se 이원화합물을 precursor로 하여 진공증발법으로 제조하였고 특성을 분석하였다. 먼저 유리기판위에 0.5μm 두께의 In2Se3를 susceptor온도를 변화시켜가면서 증착한 결과 400˚C에서 가장 평탄하고 치밀한 박막이 형성되었다. 그 위에 Cu2Se3를 진공증발시켜 증착함으로써 in-situ로 CuInSe2박막을 형성시키고 In2Se3를 추가로 증발시켜 CuInSe2박막내에 존재하는 제 2상인 Cu2Se를 제거시켰다. 이 경우 susceptor온도가 700˚C 일때 미세구조가 가장 좋은 CuInSe2박막이 형성되었으며 약 1.2μm 두께에서 약 2μm의 결정립크기와 (112) 우선배향성을 가졌다. 추가 In2Se3양이 증가함에 따라 CuInSe2박막의 조성편차보상으로 hole 농도가 감소하고 전기 비저항이 증가하였고, optical bandgap은 거의 일정한 값인 1.04eV의 값을 가졌다. Mo/유리기판 위에 증착한 CuInSe2박막도 유리기판 위에 증착한 박막과 비슷한 미세구조를 가졌으며, 이 박막을 토대로 ZnO/CdS/CuInSe2/Mo 구조를 갖는 태양전지 구현이 가능할 것으로 생각된다.

굳지 않은 콘크리트의 적층성은 콘크리트 3D 프린팅의 핵심 요소로써 필라멘트의 변형 및 붕괴 없이 일정한 높이로 적층하는 성능이다. 적층성은 항복응력과 밀접한 관련이 있으며, 항복응력이 높을수록 우수하다. 또한, 굳지 않은 콘크리트는 압출된 후 시간경과에 따라 경화되면서 전단응력이 증가하기 때문에 적층성이 높아지게 된다. 따라서, 콘크리트 3D 프린팅 시 굳지 않은 콘크리트의 적층성 확보를 위해서는 출력되는 레이어 사이의 적절한 시간 간격(Printing Time Gap, 이하 PTG)이 필요하다. PTG가 증가함에 따라 적층성은 증가하지만, PTG가 과다하게 커지면 출력된 레이어 간의 부착성능이 감소하며, 출력시간이 길어짐에 따라서 압출성능이 저하될 수 있다. 이 연구에서는 100 MPa급 고강도 콘크리트 배합에 적합한 적층성을 확보하기 위하여 PTG를 변수로 한 3D 프린팅 실험을 수행하였으며, 이와 더불어 콘크리트 3D 프린팅 방법을 유사하게 모사할 수 있는 모의 적층실험 방법의 유효성을 검토하기 위하여 모의 적층실험을 수행하였다.