Biaxial-textured Titanium Nitride thin films on low-cost, flexible metal substrate as a conductive buffer layer for thin film solar cells

Biaxial textured TiN thin films have been grown as the first conductive buffer layer for thin film silicon and III-V photovoltaics based on low-cost, flexible Hastelloy substrates. The trends of TiN (002) peak position, out-of-plane and in-plane texture quality and resistivity of biaxially-textured TiN films grown at varying N2 flow rates by reactive sputtering have been studied. The TiN film with N/Ti ratio of 0.8 shows the lowest resistivity and the best texture, making it suitable as the first conductive buffer layer for thin film silicon and III-V solar cells fabricated on inexpensive metal substrates.