Optical Recrystallization of Nanocrystalline Silicon Ribbons

The Silicon on Dust Substrate (SDS) is a gas-to-wafer process that produces multicrystalline silicon ribbons directly from gaseous feedstock (silane), avoiding the standard industry steps of polysilicon deposition, crystal growth, and wafering. The SDS technique consists of three main steps: (i) mic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMetals (Basel ) Vol. 13; no. 3; p. 452
Main Authors Serra, Filipe, Costa, Ivo, Silva, José A., Serra, João M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.03.2023
Subjects
Aluminum
Atmospheric pressure
Chemical vapor deposition
Crystal growth
Efficiency
Energy
Fluidized bed reactors
Grain size
Manufacturing
metallurgy
Methods
Nanocrystals
photovoltaic
Photovoltaic cells
Physical properties
Polysilicon
Powders
Radiation
Raw materials
Recrystallization
Ribbons
Silicon
silicon feedstock
silicon powder
silicon ribbons
Silicon substrates
Silicon wafers
Solar cells
Portugal
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Summary:The Silicon on Dust Substrate (SDS) is a gas-to-wafer process that produces multicrystalline silicon ribbons directly from gaseous feedstock (silane), avoiding the standard industry steps of polysilicon deposition, crystal growth, and wafering. The SDS technique consists of three main steps: (i) micrometric-sized silicon powder production by grinding silicon chunks; (ii) chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of silicon over this silicon powder substrate; and (iii) zone-melting recrystallization (ZMR) of the nanocrystalline pre-ribbon obtained in the CVD step. Several samples were produced by this technique. During CVD, mechanically self-sustained nanocrystalline pre-ribbons were grown over silicon powder substrates, with growth rates in the order of 50 µm/min. The ZMR process performance is substantially impacted by the pre-ribbon physical characteristics. The best and largest recrystallizations were achieved on pre-ribbons grown over powder substrates with smaller particle sizes, which also have lower substrate powder incorporation ratios. Multicrystalline silicon ribbons with crystalline areas as large as 2 × 4 cm2 were successfully produced. These areas have visible columnar crystal growth with crystal lengths up to 1 cm. The SDS ribbons’ measured resistivity confirmed the high powder content of the resulting material. The ability to produce solar cells on SDS multicrystalline silicon ribbons was demonstrated.
ISSN:2075-4701
2075-4701
DOI:10.3390/met13030452