Deposition of amorphous silicon solar cells via the pulsed PECVD technique

The pulsed plasma CVD technique has been shown to increase the deposition rate without an increase in the particulate count in the plasma, which is an important factor in determining the yield of commercial products such as solar cell modules. In this paper, the authors report on the use of this technique in a small area deposition system, and show deposition rates of a-Si:H of up to 15 Angstroms/sec can be achieved using a modulation frequency in the range of 1-100 kHz. Simple solar cells of the p/i/n configuration, deposited using this technique, have shown initial efficiencies of 9% with intrinsic-layer deposition rates of up to 7 A/sec. The application of this technique to a large-area 30 cm/spl times/40 cm system is also discussed. In particular, they report a deposition rate of rate(>25%), and the performance of small area (0.25 cm/sup 2/) devices using this approach.