Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 90 (2006) 631–639 Studies on microstructure of silicon thin films and its effect on solar cells Swati Ray à , Sumita Mukhopadhyay, Tapati Jana Energy Research Unit, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Jadavpur, Kolkata – 700 032, India Received 2 February 2005 Available online 7 July 2005 Abstract Intrinsic microcrystalline silicon films have been deposited at high-power–high-pressure regime. Effects of pressure and hydrogen dilution on the microstructures of the films have been investigated. Crystalline size decreases at high pressure although the deposition rate increases up to 10 A ˚ /s. Microstructure depends sensitively on pressure as well as on hydrogen dilution of silane. Single junction solar cells have been fabricated with Si films having different degrees of crystallinity and grain size and the performances have been studied. r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Microcrystalline silicon; PECVD; Microstructure; Solar cell 1. Introduction Intrinsic microcrystalline silicon (mc-Si:H) is being considered seriously as active layer of thin-film solar cell [1] to avoid light-induced degradation and to improve the stabilized efficiency of the cell. In such a case, the ideal intrinsic material belongs in between the amorphous and microcrystalline phase of silicon network. The silicon films are usually deposited by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition using hydrogen dilution of silane. The amount of hydrogen dilution of silane, chamber pressure (P r ), plasma excitation frequencies and plasma power (P w ) are the ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/solmat 0927-0248/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.solmat.2005.05.006 à Corresponding author. Tel./Fax: 91 33 24736612. E-mail address: ersr@iacs.res.in (S. Ray).