ABSTRACTThe Schottky barrier device with a metal/a-Si (n+) /a-Si alloy/metal structure has been widely used as an alternative evaluation tool for the photovoltaic performance of a-Si alloy material since it more reliably reflects the carrier transport in a solar cell than the conventional material characterization tool such as PDS, CPM, and SSPG, and is easier to be fabricated compared with a complete nip solar cell. However, a multiple chamber device making system is still needed to fabricate such a device since one does not want to deposit the a-Si intrinsic material to be studied together with an n+ layer in the same chamber. We have explored the use of a Schottky barrier device deposited on heavily doped n-type crystalline wafer substrate, c-Si (n+) /a-Si alloy/metal, as an evaluation tool for a-Si alloy materials. In this device, besides the evaporation of a thin semi-transparent metal layer, only the active a-Si alloy layer needs to be deposited using the plasma enhanced or other deposition techniques. We have compared the performance of such a device with that of reference n-i-p solar cells deposited at the same time and demonstrated that the FF measured under weak red light show a good correlation between these two types of devices. Therefore the c-Si (n+) /a-Si alloy/metal device can be used as a convenient technique to reliably evaluate the material performance in a solar cell device.
