Role of Amorphous Carbon Thin Film Cells Developed by Microwave Surface Wave Plasma CVD for Photovoltaic Energy Application

The a-C thin films were deposited by various techniques including a newly developed microwave (MW) surface-wave plasma (SWP) chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique for solar cell application. The optical, structural, electrical and electronic properties of the films were studied by UV/VIS/NIR spectroscopy, AFM, Raman, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and current-voltage (I-V) measurements. In this paper, we report experimental results of the optical, structural and photovoltaic properties of the a-C thin films; the results suggested that it is possible to control film growth rate and optical band gap with increasing gas composition pressure (GCP) inside the film deposition chamber consequently improve photoconductivity by proper selection of deposition parameters. Our research work is in progressing stage to realize cheap, high efficiency and environmentally friendly a-C based photovoltaic solar cell in near future