Materials Science Forum, Vol.475-479, 3791-3794, 2005
Laser doping and recrystallization for amorphous silicon films by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition
One of the most challenging problems to develop polycrystalline silicon thin-film solar cells is the growth of crystalline silicon on foreign, low-cost and low-temperature substrates. In this paper, a laser doping technique was developed for the plasma-deposited amorphous silicon film. A process combination of recrystallization and dopant diffusion (phosphorous or boron) was achieved simultaneously by the laser annealing process. The doping precursor was synthesized by a sol-gel method and was spin-coated on the sample. After laser irradiation, the grain size of the doped polycrystalline silicon was examined to be about 0.5 similar to 1.0 mu m. The concentrations of 2x10(19) and 5 x 10(18) cm(-3) with Hall mobilities of 92.6 and 37.5 cm(2)/V-s were achieved for the laser-diffused phosphorous- and boron-type polysilicon films, respectively.