Fabrication and characterization of lateral P-I-N poly-Si solar cell utilizing Ni silicide-induced crystallization on glass substrate

We prepared a lateral structure of thin-film polycrystalline (Poly-Si) solar cell by low temperature Ni silicide-induced crystallization (SIC) for the first time. We compared I-V characteristics of two types of lateral Solar cells (LSCs), with isolated (p-i-n) cells and connected (p-i-n) cells. The LSCs of isolated cells showed clear rectifying behavior for a wider range of intrinsic region width (W) compared to the connected cells. At the same values of W, a higher short-circuit current (J
_SC
) was obtained from isolated cells than the connected cells. We obtained J
_SC
of 3.3 mA/cm
²
and an open-circuit voltage (V
_OC
) of 0.13 V from a relatively thin ~400 nm isolated cell, without applying any optimization.