Plasma-Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition of TiN Thin Films as an Effective Se Diffusion Barrier for CIGS Solar Cells

Plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) of TiN thin films were investigated as an effective Se diffusion barrier layer for Cu (In, Ga) Se2 (CIGS) solar cells. Before the deposition of TiN thin film on CIGS solar cells, a saturated growth rate of 0.67 Å/cycle was confirmed using tetrakis(dimethylamido)titanium (TDMAT) and N2 plasma at 200 °C. Then, a Mo (≈30 nm)/PEALD-TiN (≈5 nm)/Mo (≈600 nm) back contact stack was fabricated to investigate the effects of PEALD-TiN thin films on the Se diffusion. After the selenization process, it was revealed that ≈5 nm-thick TiN thin films can effectively block Se diffusion and that only the top Mo layer prepared on the TiN thin films reacted with Se to form a MoSe2 layer. Without the TiN diffusion barrier layer, however, Se continuously diffused along the grain boundaries of the entire Mo back contact electrode. Finally, the adoption of a TiN diffusion barrier layer improved the photovoltaic efficiency of the CIGS solar cell by approximately 10%.

Software Package Application for Self-consistent Processing of X-ray Measurement Data for Studying Structural Properties and Parameters of Objects

The article presents the results of TiN diffusion-barrier layers studies on a silicon substrate, carried out with the use of the copyrighted software package. In this paper, it is proposed to use several methods for studying the structures and combine them in the form of an integrated approach, which allows not only to increase the calculation accuracy but also to solve most of the arisen problems. Based on this approach, an automated software package for X-ray spectral and X-ray structural analysis was developed to study the elemental and phase composition of the objects, including the analysis of ore minerals, which allows not only to obtain a more complete and detailed picture of the studied objects, but also to increase the sensitivity threshold detection of individual elements that are not detected by individual methods of analysis.