Electrical properties of hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon carbon alloys: effect of deposition parameters and light soaking

New materials with electrical properties similar to those of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) or hydrogenated amorphous silicon germanium alloys, but that are stable under light soaking, could be a breakthrough for multi-junction thin-film silicon solar cell technology. With this aim, hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon-carbon alloy (�c- � Si C xx 1 :H) thin films seem like promising candidates as the variation of the carbon in the alloy composition can be used to tune the effective bandgap, keeping a high crystalline fraction. In this study, a highly