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Results for “ohmic contact”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 163 records · Page 9
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1981

Development of technique for AR coating and nickel and copper metallization of solar cells: FPS project, product development

Silicon nitride and nickel pastes are investigated in conjunction with a brush copper plating process for the purpose of identifying one or more fabrication sequences which yield at least 10 percent efficient N(+)/P(+) flat plate solar cells. The adhesion of all nickel pastes is reduced significantly when subjected to acidic and alkaline brush copper plating solutions as a result of a combination of thermally induced stress and chemical attack of the frit, which occurs at the interface with the silicon solar cell. The AgF is penetrating the 800 a of Si3N4 and ohmic contact is occurring at all fire-in tempertures. During the brush plating process, fingers and buss bars tend to spread.

Rominger, C. G.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Electron Beam Could Probe Recombination Centers

Electron beam probe technique estimate electron/hole capture cross sections in semiconductors with wide band gaps. Amplitude-modulated electron beam induces short-circuit current collected by ohmic contacts. Phase shift between this current and electron-beam current measured as function of frequency. Results of measurements used to ascertain recombination rates and energy levels.

Vonroos, O.↗
NASA NTRS1982

Solar cell having improved back surface reflector

The operating temperature is reduced and the output of a solar cell is increased by using a solar cell which carries electrodes in a grid finger pattern on its back surface. These electrodes are sintered at the proper temperature to provide good ohmic contact. After sintering, a reflective material is deposited on the back surface by vacuum evaporation. Thus, the application of the back surface reflector is separate from the back contact formation. Back surface reflectors formed in conjunction with separate grid finger configuration back contacts are more effective than those formed by full back metallization of the reflector material.

Chai, A. T.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Research in millimeter wave techniques

Work on the development of an improved 183 GHz subharmonic mixer was concentrated in two areas. First, there was an improved performance from current mixer body designs by testing different diodes and varying the whisker lengths. Second, there is the design of a new body structure. The whisker and diode pinsare in the same piece of the mixer that holds the substrate, reducing any motion of the parts that form the ohmic contacts of the diodes circuit. The broadband, low loss, quasi-optical diplexer, which is designed for use with a single ended mixer, has been developed. It uses a Gaussian beam waveguide as its transmission medium. The difference between the diplexer and other diplexers is the use of a Fabry Perot parallel plate filter. One is a multichannel radiometer system. Another approach is a quasi-optical RF polarization diplexer and another receiver. Some of the receivers developed were flown in aircraft and degraded considerably because of an LO failure. A technique for adding a 118 GHz channel to the existing Atmospheric Moisture Microwave Scanner radiometer system, using the RF diplexing scheme, is presented.

Forsythe, R. E.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Recombination phenomena in high efficiency silicon solar cells

The dominant recombination phenomena which limit the highest efficiency attainable in silicon solar cells under terrestrial sunlight are reviewed. The ultimate achievable efficiency is limited by the two intrinsic recombination mechanisms, the interband Auger recombination and interband Radiative recombination, both of which occur in the entire cell body but principally in the base layer. It is suggested that an optimum (26%) cell design is one with lowly doped 50 to 100 micron thick base, a perfect BSF, and zero extrinsic recombination such as the thermal mechanism at recombination centers the Shockley-Read-Hall process (SRH) in the bulk, on the surface and at the interfaces. The importance of recombination at the interfaces of a high-efficiency cell is demonstrated by the ohmic contact on the back surface whose interface recombination velocity is infinite. The importance of surface and interface recombination is demonstrated by representing the auger and radiative recombination losses by effective recombination velocities. It is demonstrated that the three highest efficiency cells may all be limited by the SRH recombination losses at recombination centers in the base layer.

Sah, C. T.↗
NASA NTRS1985

GaAsP on GaP top solar cells

GaAsP on GaP top solar cells as an attachment to silicon bottom solar cells are being developed. The GaAsP on GaP system offers several advantages for this top solar cell. The most important is that the gallium phosphide substrate provides a rugged, transparent mechanical substrate which does not have to be removed or thinned during processing. Additional advantages are that: (1) gallium phosphide is more oxidation resistant than the III-V aluminum compounds, (2) a range of energy band gaps higher than 1.75 eV is readily available for system efficiency optimization, (3) reliable ohmic contact technology is available from the light-emitting diode industry, and (4) the system readily lends itself to graded band gap structures for additional increases in efficiency.

Mcneely, J. B.↗
NASA NTRS1985

A possible radiation-resistant solar cell geometry using superlattices

A solar cell structure is proposed which uses a GaAs nipi doping superlattice. An important feature of this structure is that photogenerated minority carriers are very quickly collected in a time shorter than bulk lifetime in the fairly heavily doped n and p layers and these carriers are then transported parallel to the superlattice layers to selective ohmic contacts. Assuming that these already-separated carriers have very long recombination lifetimes, due to their across an indirect bandgap in real space, it is argued that the proposed structure may exhibit superior radiation tolerance along with reasonably high beginning-of-life efficiency.

Goradia, C.↗
NASA NTRS1985

GaAs Schottky barrier photo-responsive device and method of fabrication

A gallium arsenide photo-responsive device is provided with an intermediate, transparent layer of a refractory metal or alkaline earth metal forming a tenacious bond between a non-hydroscopic oxide layer and a noble metal Schottky barrier layer. The device has a gallium arsenide substrate with a predetermined type conductivity and a gallium arsenide epitaxial layer with the same type conductivity but a lower charge carrier concentration grown on the substrate. The oxide layer is formed to cover the epitaxial layer, and the transparent metal layer followed by the noble metal layer are deposited upon the oxide layer. An interdigitated ohmic contact is then formed upon the noble metal layer.

Alcorn, G. E.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Comments on determination of bandgap narrowing from activation plots

A determination is made of the temperature-dependence of emitter saturation current in bipolar devices which allows the derivation of a value for bandgap narrowing that is in better agreement with other determinations than previous results based on ohmic contact measurements of temperature dependence. The new values were obtained by varying the surface recombination velocity at the emitter surface. This improves accuracy by varying the minority carrier surface recombination velocity at the emitter contacts of otherwise indistinguishable emitters.

Park, J.-S.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Growth and characterization of epitaxial SrF2 on InP(100)

The epitaxial growth of 100-262.5-nm SrF2 films on n-type and p-type (100)InP in a conventional baked UHV system at base pressure about 200 ptorr, temperature 250-350 C, and growth rate from less than 100 to about 200 pm/s. Substrates are chemicomechanically polished, degreased, bombarded with 500-eV Ar ions for 3-4 min at 350 C, and annealed for 23-30 min at 350 C, producing a slightly In-rich (In/P = 1.02) In-island-free surface with a (4 x 1) or (1 x 1) LEED structure. Films grown at 350 C and less than 100 pm/s are found to be smooth and free of cracks in most cases, with a highly faceted (1 x 1) LEED structure. The electrical properties of the SrF2 films are found to be acceptable only when the ohmic contacts are applied prior to the substrate prior to SrF2 growth.

Sinharoy, S.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Diamondlike carbon films on semiconductors for insulated-gate technology

MIS structures are fabricated on p-type InP, GaAs, and Si substrated by direct ionization of 25-percent CH4 in Ar and ion-beam deposition of 70-nm-thick diamondlike films, followed by application of Al gate electrodes and ohmic contacts. The films are found to have bandgap 0.9-1.1 eV, resistivity 8.1 Mohm cm, breakdown field strength 1 MV/cm, and density 1.8 g/cu cm, to be thermally stable up to 400 C, and to undergo rapid decomposition above 450 C. The electrical properties of the MIS structures are significantly improved by sputter cleaning the substrates with a 1-keV 2-mA/sq cm Ar beam for 2 min at 300 microtorr prior to C-film deposition. The resulting structures have fixed insulator charge number densities 4 x 10 to the 12th/sq cm (InP), 7.5 x 10 to the 12th/sq cm (GaAs), and 9 x 10 to the 11th/sq cm (Si) and interface state densities (5, 200, and 0.5) x 10 to the 12th/ sq cm eV, respectively. It is suggested that the low optical bandgap and resistivity of the C films and the high insulator-charge and interface-state densities make them unstable as gate dielectrics for microelectronics.

Kapoor, V. J.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Heavy doping effects in high efficiency silicon solar cells

The temperature dependence of the emitter saturation current for bipolar devices was studied by varying the surface recombination velocity at the emitter surface. From this dependence, the value was derived for bandgap narrowing that is in better agreement with other determinations that were obtained from the temperature dependence measure on devices with ohmic contacts. Results of the first direct measurement of the minority-carrier transit time in a transparent heavily doped emitter layer were reported. The value was obtained by a high-frequency conductance method recently developed and used for doped Si. Experimental evidence is presented for significantly greater charge storage in highly excited silicon near room temperature than conventional theory would predict. These data are compared with various data for delta E sub G in heavily doped silicon.

Lindholm, F. A.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Superstructure high efficiency photovoltaics

A novel class of photovoltaic cascade structures is introduced which features multijunction upper subcells. These superstructure high efficiency photovoltaics (SHEP's) exhibit enhanced upper subcell spectral response because of the additional junctions which serve to reduce bulk recombination losses by decreasing the mean collection distance for photogenerated minority carriers. Two possible electrical configurations were studied and compared: a three-terminal scheme that allows both subcells to be operated at their individual maximum power points and a two-terminal configuration with an intercell ohmic contact for series interconnection. The three-terminal devices were found to be superior both in terms of beginning-of-life expectancy and radiation tolerance. Realistic simulations of three-terminal AlGaAs/GaAs SHEP's show that one sun AMO efficiencies in excess of 26 percent are possible.

Wagner, M.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Modelling of multijunction cascade photovoltaics for space applications

An alternative class of photovoltaics was presented, which is designed to overcome two problem areas with conventional cascade designs: poor upper subcell performance and lossy intercell ohmic contact (IOC). It was shown that upper subcell quality can be improved by incorporating additional junctions into the upper subcell and that the problems with monolithic IOCs may be circumvented by using complementary pairs of three-terminal cells or a 1 x 2 voltage-matched configuration. Realistic simulations show that AlGaAs-GaAs and AlGaAs-InGaAs multijunction, multiband-gap solar cells (MJSC) may achieve benginning-of-life (BOL) one-sun, AMO efficiencies of 26 and 28 percent, respectively. Complementary cells made in the AlGaAs-InGaAs system can achieve BOL one-sun AMO efficiencies in excess of 27 percent. Seven-layer MJSCs are most advantageous for space applications due to their superior tolerance to radiation degradation.

Educato, James Louis↗
NASA NTRS1985

A proposed GaAs-based superlattice solar cell structure with high efficiency and high radiation tolerance

A solar cell structure is proposed which uses a GaAs nipi doping superlattice. An important feature of this structure is that photogenerated minority carriers are very quickly collected in a time shorter than bulk lifetime in the fairly heavily doped n and p layers and these carriers are then transported parallel to the superlattice layers to selective ohmic contacts. Assuming that these already-separated carriers have very long recombination lifetimes, due to their being across an indirect bandgap in real space, it is argued that the proposed structure may exhibit superior radiation tolerance along with reasonably high beginning-of-life efficiency.

Goradia, Chandra↗
NASA NTRS1987

Variations in the electrical short-circuit current decay for recombination lifetime and velocity measurements

An improved measurement system for electrical short-circuit current decay is presented that extends applicability of the method to silicon solar cells having an effective lifetime as low as 1 microsec. The system uses metal/oxide/semiconductor transistors as voltage-controlled switches. Advances in theory developed here increase precision and sensitivity in the determination of the minority-carrier recombination lifetime and recombination velocity. A variation of the method, which exploits measurements made on related back-surface field and back-ohmic contact devices, further improves precision and sensitivity. The improvements are illustrated by application to 15 different silicon solar cells.

Jung, Tae-Won↗
NASA NTRS1987

Electrochemical studies of thin films of conducting polymers and conducting polymer composites deposited on metal and semiconductor electrodes

Electrochemical studies indicate that poly(Isothianaphthene) or PITN, can be p-doped only. Electrochemical properties of PITN and Nafion-PITN in acetonitrile solutions containing tetra-phenyl Phosphonium chloride as supporting electrolyte are compared. In both cases, the electrochemical behavior of thin films are different from that of thick films. In addition, Nafion does not seem to alter the electrochemical properties of PITN. Cyclic voltammetric and chronocoulometric measurements were made to compute the diffusion coefficient of the counter ions. Electrochemical behavior of both PITN and Nafion-PITN in acetonitrile solution containing different counter ions are described. PITN, when electrochemically deposited, apparently neither passivates surface states present nor forms ohmic contacts with p-Si or p(+)Si single-crystal electrodes.

Nagasubramanian, G.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Multijunction upper subcell cascade photovoltaics for space applications

A new class of cascade high-efficiency photovoltaics designed for space-based applications is proposed. The design improves upper subcell performance and avoids electrical and optical losses associated with an intercell ohmic contact. Multijunction upper subcells reduce bulk recombination of photogenerated minority carriers by decreasing the average collection distance, yielding improved spectral response and radiation tolerance. A three-terminal design is employed which circumvents the need for a monolithic intercell contact and, thus, the losses associated with such a contact. Problems related to array interconnection of three-terminal devices may be solved by creating a two-terminal cell from complementary pairs (n-p-n and p-n-p) of three-terminal cells. Simulations of lattice-matched AlGaAs-GaAs and lattice-mismatched AlGaAs-InGaAs cascade cells show that one-sun AM0 efficiencies in excess of 26 and 28 percent, respectively, are possible.

Educato, J. L.↗