Evaluation of Hydrogen plasma effect in a-Si:H/c-Si interface by means of Surface Photovoltage measurement and FTIR spectroscopy

The amorphous/crystalline silicon technology has demonstrated its potentiality leading to high efficiency solar cells. To enhance the interface quality we investigate the effect of hydrogen plasma and thermal annealing treatments performed on thin amorphous silicon layer deposited over crystalline silicon surface. To this aim we use surface photovoltage technique, as a contact-less tool for the evaluation of the energetic distribution of the state density at amorphous/crystalline silicon interface, and FTIR spectroscopy of the same samples to evaluate the evolution of Si-H and Si-H2 bonds. The surface photovoltage technique results to be very sensitive to the different experimental treatments, and therefore it can be considered a precious tool to monitor and improve the interface electronic quality. 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. In particular the latter reduces the defect density of one order of magnitude and keeps 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.