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An approach for determining chemical composition of zinc oxide films with carbon-containing contamination at the surface

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Abstract

Reliable determination of the elemental composition of the ZnO-based films is complicated by the fact that as a result of interaction with the environment, surface of the films is quickly covered by a large number of carbon-containing CO x contaminations. In this paper, we propose two methods for analyzing the results of the measurements of the elemental composition, allowing to determine the composition of the film and of contamination. These methods are based on deposition and analysis of several (at least two) films grown under the same conditions, which differ only in film thickness. Both methods were applied for processing the elemental composition obtained by EDS for ten pairs of Ga-doped ZnO (GZO) films grown by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis on silicon substrate. In each pair, one GZO film was thinner than the other thicker one. The pairs of films differed from one another by the Ga/Zn ratio in the film-forming solution, used for the synthesis of films GZO, which varied in the range 0–15 at.%. The composition of the contamination at the surface was found to be CO0.925. Concentration of oxygen in GZO is 41.7 ± 1 at.%, O/(Ga + Zn) ratio is around 0.72 ± 0.03. Crystalline silicon solar cells based on GZO/(p+nn+)c-Si structure with spray-deposited GZO films as an antireflection coating and transparent electrode showed the efficiency of 15.7 % at one sun conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under Grant Nos. 13-08-00708, 14-08-01152, 14-08-01271, and 15-08-07863.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microelectronics, Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1/2 Leninskie Gory, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119991

    G. G. Untila, T. N. Kost, A. B. Chebotareva, A. N. Ryabinkin & M. A. Timofeyev

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  1. G. G. Untila
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  2. T. N. Kost
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  3. A. B. Chebotareva
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  4. A. N. Ryabinkin
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  5. M. A. Timofeyev
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Correspondence to A. B. Chebotareva.

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Untila, G.G., Kost, T.N., Chebotareva, A.B. et al. An approach for determining chemical composition of zinc oxide films with carbon-containing contamination at the surface. J Mater Sci 50, 8038–8045 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9371-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9371-8

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