High-quality polycrystalline silicon thin film prepared by a solid phase crystallization method

We succeeded in fabricating high-quality polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin films with no boundary from the bottom surface to the top, and achieved an extremely high electron mobility of 808 cm(2)/V s by a solid phase crystallization (SPC) method. This film was obtained by using a new nucleation layer with 1000 Angstrom wide single-crystalline grains embedded in a matrix of amorphous tissue. A poly-Si thin-film solar cell fabricated using this film as an active layer demonstrated a total area conversion efficiency of 9.2% (active area efficiency: 9.7%), which is the world's highest value for crystalline silicon solar cells fabricated below 600 degrees C on metal substrates.