Amorphous SiC layers for electrically conductive rugate filters in silicon based solar cells

The subject of this work is the development of an electrically conductive Rugate filter for photovoltaic applications. We think that the optical as well as the electrical performance of the filter can be adapted especially to the requirements of crystalline Si thin-film and amorphous/crystalline silicon tandem solar cells. We have deposited amorphous hydrogenated Silicon Carbide layers (a-SixC1-x:H) with the precursor gases methane (CH4), silane (SiH4) and diborane (B2H6) applying Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PECVD). Through changing just the precursor flows a floating refractive index n from 1.9 to 3.5 (at 633 nm) could be achieved quite accurately. Different complex layer stacks (up to 200 layers) with a sinusoidal refractive index variation normal to the incident light were deposited in just 80 min on 100x100 mm2. Transmission measurements show good agreement between simulation and experiment which proofs our ability to control the deposition process, the good knowledge of the optical behaviour of the different SiC single layers and the advanced stage of our simulation model. The doped single layers show lateral conductivities which were extremely dependent on the Si/C ratio.