Investigation on production of highly textured Sb doped polycrystalline silicon using solid state Nd: YAG laser for photovoltaic application

Efficient doping of amorphous silicon(a-Si) is a key issue in the field of photovoltaic applications. In this paper an attempt has been made to produce a highly highly textured Sb doped a-Si. The a-Si were coated with Sb to a thickness of 200nm using vacuum evaporation method and treated with an Nd:YAG laser of 355nm with a threshold fluence of 460mJ/cm2 by overlapping the laser spots to 90% of its size. The samples are retretaed with a low laser fluence of 230mJ/cm2 respectively so as to crytsallize and diffuse the Sb on to the surface and to activate the dopant. The laser doped and subequently laser textured samples were analysed through Scanning Electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) & Atomic Force Microscope(AFM).The traces of SiSb in the XRD peak with improved surface roughness were observed on the laser doped samples. This represents that the dopants are highly diffused on the a-Si. © 2010 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.