Glow discharge deposition at high rates using disilane

The research program reported makes use of the fact that amorphous silicon films can be grown faster from disilane in a glow discharge than from the traditional silane. The goal is to find a method to grow films at a high rate and with sufficiently high quality to be used in an efficient solar cell. It must also be demonstrated that the appropriate device structure can be successfully fabricated under conditions which give high deposition rates. High quality intrinsic films have been deposited at 20 A/s. Efficiency of 5.6% on steel substrates and 5.3% on glass substrates were achieved using disilane i-layers deposited at 15 A/s in a basic structure, without wide-gap doped layers or light trapping. Wide gap p-layers were deposited using disilane. Results were compared with those obtained using high power discharges of silane-hydrogen mixtures.