Hydrogen plasma and thermal annealing treatments on a-Si:H thin film for c-Si surface passivation

High efficiency solar cells can be fruitfully built using the amorphous/crystalline silicon technology, taking advantage of the high Voc that occurs as a consequence of excellent c-Si surface passivation provided by a-Si:H films. Improvements of the interface quality can be obtained using post deposition treatments such as hydrogen plasma and thermal annealing. We propose the use of surface photovoltage technique, as a contact-less tool to evaluate the energetic distribution of the state density at amorphous/crystalline silicon interface, and FTIR spectroscopy of the same samples to appreciate the evolution of Si-H and Si-H2 bonds. This approach leads to interesting applications for monitoring and improving the interface electronic quality, which is extremely susceptible to the different treatments adopted. We found that thermal annealing produces a metastable state which goes back to the initial state after just 48 hours, while the effect of hydrogen plasma post-treatment results more stable. Moreover H2 plasma reduces the defect density of one order of magnitude with respect to thermal annealing and keeps it constant also after one month. The hydrogen plasma is able to reduce the defect density but at the same time increases the surface charge within the a-Si:H film due to the H+ ions accumulated during the plasma exposure, leading to a more stable configuration.