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2009
Conference Paper
Titel
Industrial sputtering metallization technology for crystalline silicon solar cells
Abstract
In this paper first results on the stability and applicability for an inline sputtering pilot system (Applied Materials ATON 500 Ev + Sp) with industrially feasible deposition rates are shown. The system consists of two different process chambers, one for thermal evaporation and a second one for sputter deposition of two different metals. The applicability of the sputtering process for the front side metallization has first been determined in an experimental setup on a non PV dedicated system. Different experiments were performed to evaluate the properties of the sputtered layers. To determine the possible damage of the passivation layer during the sputter deposition, test structures for minority carrier lifetime measurements were prepared. The layer growth of the sputtered metal depends on the temperature of the substrate and the sputtered target material properties as well. To determine the layer growth and the homogeneity, experiments were performed to evaluate the sheet resistance and to identify their relation to an industrial inline metallization process with various deposition rates after transferring the process to the pilot system. Sheet resistance measurements are additionally used to analyze a very important aspect of the metallization process, the silicide formation. Depending on the applied metal for the deposited layer, the time and temperature of the tempering process has to be chosen individually in order to from a suitable silicide layer for subsequent contact formation.