Kato Shinya, Yamazaki Tatsuya, Kurokawa Yasuyoshi, Miyajima Shinsuke, Konagai Makoto
Department of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Showa-ku, Nagoya-shi, Aichi, 466-8555, Japan.
Department of Physical Electronics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8552, Japan.
Nanoscale Res Lett. 2017 Dec;12(1):242. doi: 10.1186/s11671-017-2006-z. Epub 2017 Mar 31.
Surface passivation and bulk carrier lifetime of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) are essential for their application in solar cell devices. The effective minority carrier lifetime of a semiconductor material is influenced by both its surface passivation and bulk carrier lifetime. We found that the effective carrier lifetime of SiNWs passivated with aluminum oxide (AlO) was significantly influenced by the fabrication process of SiNWs. We could not measure the effective lifetime of SiNWs fabricated by thermal annealing of amorphous silicon nanowires. Nevertheless, the SiNWs fabricated by metal-assisted chemical etching of polycrystalline silicon displayed an effective lifetime of 2.86 μs. Thermal annealing of SiNWs at 400 °C in a forming gas improved the effective carrier lifetime from 2.86 to 15.9 μs because of the improvement in surface passivation at the interface between the SiNWs and AlO layers.
硅纳米线（SiNWs）的表面钝化和体内载流子寿命对其在太阳能电池器件中的应用至关重要。半导体材料的有效少数载流子寿命受其表面钝化和体内载流子寿命两者影响。我们发现，用氧化铝（AlO）钝化的SiNWs的有效载流子寿命受SiNWs制造工艺的显著影响。我们无法测量通过非晶硅纳米线热退火制造的SiNWs的有效寿命。然而，通过多晶硅的金属辅助化学蚀刻制造的SiNWs显示出2.86 μs的有效寿命。在形成气体中于400°C对SiNWs进行热退火，由于SiNWs与AlO层之间界面处表面钝化的改善，有效载流子寿命从2.86 μs提高到了15.9 μs。
