Morphology and Conductivity Characteristics of Polycrystalline Silicon Thin Film Deposited by Plasma-Enhanced Vapor Deposition in Textured Substrate

Abstract

We investigate the characteristics of polycrystalline Silicon (poly-Si) thin films for solar cells produced by very high frequency (VHF) plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition using a conductive scanning probe microscope (SPM). We measure the surface morphology and local current images are simultaneously of the poly-Si layers with a thickness, d=2 mm, formed on textured Ag/SnO2/glass in the range of RMS based-textured substrate (a) s=85nm, (b) s=42nm and (c) s=2nm respectively. Influences of the substrate texture on the crystal growth as well as the local current flow are discussed. Where we found that the average of local current proportional with crystallinity, where the poly-Si layer that has rich crystallinity indicated low conductivity that yield high local current.