Nickel Silicide Phase Distribution of Electroless Deposited Contacts on Silicon P plus Junction Substrate Using Nano-Indented Atomic Force Microscopy

Abstract

It is important to reduce the contact resistance in Si solar cells with multilayer Ni/Cu electrodes in contrast to those with a single electrode. When Ni is annealed, an interphase occurs at the interface of Ni and Si, and it possesses different phases depending on the annealing temperature and time. Various methods, including X-ray diffraction, have been previously used to identify and verify these phases. This study predicts the phase using mechanical/thermal data obtained via differential scanning calorimetry and atomic force microscopy and then compared the results of the contact resistance in order to validate the behavior according to the phases of nickel silicide (NixSiy) obtained at annealing temperatures between 200 degrees C and 500 degrees C.