Crystals (Apr 2022)

Electrophoretic Deposited Quartz Powder-Assisted Growth of Multicrystalline Silicon

  • Xiang Quan,
  • Ningyi Yuan,
  • Chunlai Huang,
  • Jilong Liao

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12040526
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 4
p. 526

Abstract

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Ingot multicrystalline silicon (Mc-Si) needs to be improved in quality and reduced in cost compared with Czochralski monocrystalline silicon. A uniform and dense quartz nucleation layer was obtained by the electrophoretic deposition of quartz powder on the surface of the silicon wafer. The deposited silicon wafer was annealed at 600 °C for 1 h, and one side of the silicon wafer with the quartz layer was glued to the crucible. During the growth of Mc-Si crystal, the dense quartz powder can play a nucleation role. The results show that the average lifetime of the minority carriers a of quartz-assisted silicon ingot is 7.4 μs. The overall dislocation density of an electrophoretic deposition quartz-assisted silica ingot is low, and the defect density in the middle of the silica ingot is 1.5%, which is significantly lower than that of spray quartz (3.1%) and silicon particle (4.2%). Moreover, electrophoretic deposited quartz-assisted mc-Si can obtain oriented grains, which offers a potential to apply alkaline texturing on mc-Si wafers.

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