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Aluminum acetylacetonate-based AlOx thin films were introduced as a low-cost, high-quality passivation layers for crystalline silicon solar cells. Films were formed by a spin coating method on p-type silicon substrates at 450°C in ambient air, O2, or water vapor (H2O/O2) for 15 or 120 min. XPS analysis confirms the AlOx formation and reveals a high intensity of interfacial SiOx at the AlOx/Si interface of processed wafers. Ambient H2O/O2 was found to be more beneficial for the activation of introduced AlOx passivation films which offers high lifetime improvements with a low thermal budget. Carrier lifetime measurements provides that symmetrically coated wafers reach 119.3 μs and 248.3 μs after annealing in ambient H2O/O2 for 15 min and 120 min, respectively.

Artificially fabricated 3d/5d superlattices (SLs) involve both strong electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling in one material by means of interfacial 3d-5d coupling, whose mechanism remains mostly unexplored. In this work we investigated the mechanism of interfacial coupling in LaMnO_{3}/SrIrO_{3} SLs by several spectroscopic approaches. Hard x-ray absorption, magnetic circular dichroism and photoemission spectra evidence the systematic modulation of the Ir ferromagnetism and the electronic structure with the change of the SL repetition period. First-principles calculations further reveal the mechanism of the SL-period dependence of the interfacial electronic structure and the local properties of the Ir moments, confirming that the formation of Ir-Mn molecular orbital is responsible for the interfacial coupling effects. The SL-period dependence of the ratio between orbital and spin components of the Ir magnetic moments can be attributed to the realignment of electron spin during the formation of the interfacial molecular orbital. Our results clarify the nature of interfacial coupling in this prototypical 3d/5d SL system and the conclusion will shed light on the study of other strongly correlated and spin-orbit coupled oxide heterointerfaces.

We investigated the room temperature growth of HfO2 layers on Si substrates by pulsed laser deposition under ultra-high vacuum conditions. The laser fluence (LF) during HfO2 layer growth was varied as a growth parameter in the experiments. X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) was used to observe the interface chemical states of the HfO2/Si samples produced by various LFs. The XPS results indicated that an interface Hf-silicate layer formed, even at room temperature, and that the thickness of this layer increased with increasing pulsed LF. Additionally, Hf-Si bonds were increasingly formed at the interface when the LF was more than 2 J/cm2. This bond formation process was related to decomposition of HfO2 to its atomic states of Hf and O by multiphoton photochemical processes for bandgap excitation of the HfO2 polycrystalline target. However, the Hf-Si bond content of the interface Hf-silicate layer is controllable under high LF conditions. The results presented here represent a practical contribution to the development of room temperature processing of Hf-compound based devices.

We studied the effective net charge density (Qeff) of strontium silicate (SrxSiOx+2, x = 1, 2, 3) films grown on silicon (Si) (100) substrates. The SrxSiOx+2 layers were deposited from a Sr2SiO4 polycrystalline target by pulsed laser deposition, and then annealed at 400–600 °C in an oxygen atmosphere with a tube furnace. The Qeff values of the SrxSiOx+2/Si (100) samples were obtained from the shift in the voltage of the flat band state in their capacitance–voltage curves. The SrxSiOx+2/ Si (100) samples with a thickness of 15 nm annealed at 400 °C showed the maximum Qeff/q value of 1.03 × 1013 cm-2, where q is the elementary charge. With increasing annealing temperature, the SrxSiOx+2 layer penetrated into the Si (100) substrate. This penetration may degrade the interfacial properties and decrease the Qeff value of the layers. For all the samples, the charges concentrated near the SrxSiOx+2/Si (100) interface. Our results suggest that anion and cation migration plays an important role in charge generation at the SrxSiOx+2/Si (100) interface, consistent with the findings of a previously reported molecular dynamics calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors studied the correlation between the chemical bonding (CB) states and fixed charge (FC) states of Sr-silicate films grown on Si(100) substrates [Sr-silicate/Si(100)]. The Sr-silicate/ Si(100) samples were synthesized by silicate reaction of SrO layers on the Si substrates through the diffusion of Si atoms from the substrates by thermal annealing in oxygen atmosphere. The CB states and the FC states of the Sr-silicate/Si(100) samples were obtained from their O 1s core-level x-ray photoemission spectra and the shift in voltage from the flat band state in their capacitance- voltage curves, respectively. Peak fittings of the O 1s core-level spectra for each sample were carried out with the three components of Si-O, Si-O-Sr, and Sr-O bonds to determine the CB state. The thin Sr-silicate layers were mainly constructed of the Si-O-Sr component. With increasing thickness, the amount of Si-O-Sr component decreased while that of Sr-O increased. The thickness dependency of the FC density showed a good agreement with that of the Si-O-Sr component, revealing a clear correlation between FC and Sr-O-Si bonding. Our results suggest that silicate bonding plays an important role in FC generation in Sr-silicate systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors fabricated 2 x 1 Sr-reconstructed Si(100) substrates using thin SrO layers, and used them to direct growth of crystalline perovskite oxide on Si. The SrO layers used to reconstruct the Si(100) substrates were grown by pulsed laser deposition from a SrO single crystal target, followed by postdeposition-annealing (PDA) of the SrO/Si(100) structure. In situ observations of reflective highenergy electron diffraction during PDA confirmed a 2 x 1 reconstruction of the Si surface and x-ray photoemission spectroscopy of the annealed samples confirmed the existence of Sr atoms in a silicate phase, which indicated that a 2 x 1 Sr-reconstructed Si surface was achieved. The optimal fabrication conditions were annealing at 720 °C for 1min and an equivalent SrO layer thickness (MLeq) of 2.5MLeq. The temperature condition was very narrow, at 720±20 °C, for an acceptable product. Subsequently, the authors demonstrated the growth of crystalline SrTiO3 films on the 2 x 1 Sr-reconstructed Si(100) surfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aluminum oxide (AlOx) films were deposited by mist chemical vapor deposition (MCVD) in air for p-type crystalline silicon, and the effects of the deposition temperature (Tdep) and AlOx film thickness on the maximum surface recombination velocities (Smax) were evaluated. It was found that Smax was improved with increasing Tdep. The AlOx film deposited at 400 °C exhibited the best Smax value of 2.8 cm/s, and the passivation quality was comparable to that of AlOx deposited by other vacuum-based techniques. Smax was also improved with increasing film thickness. When the film thickness was above 10 nm, Smax was approximately 10 cm/s. From the Fourier transform infrared spectra, it was found that the AlOx films deposited by MCVD consisted of an AlOx layer and a Si-diffused AlOx layer. In addition, it is important for the layers to be thick enough to obtain high-quality passivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]