Print Email Facebook Twitter Electron tomography analysis of 3D interfacial nanostructures appearing in annealed Si rich SiC films Title Electron tomography analysis of 3D interfacial nanostructures appearing in annealed Si rich SiC films Author Xie, L (Uppsala University) Jarolímek, K. (TU Delft Photovoltaic Materials and Devices) Kocevski, V. (Uppsala University) Rusz, J. (Uppsala University) Zeman, M. (TU Delft Electrical Sustainable Energy) van Swaaij, R.A.C.M.M. (TU Delft Photovoltaic Materials and Devices) Leifer, K (Uppsala University) Department Electrical Sustainable Energy Date 2017-04 Abstract The optical and electrical properties of Si rich SiC (SRSC) solar cell absorber layers will strongly depend on interfacial layers between the Si and the SiC matrix and in this work, we analyze hitherto undiscovered interfacial layers. The SRSC thin films were deposited using a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique and annealed in a nitrogen environment at 1100 °C. The thermal treatment leads to metastable SRSC films spinodally decomposed into a Si–SiC nanocomposite. After the thermal treatment, the coexistence of crystalline Si and SiC nanostructures was analysed by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and electron diffraction. From the quantitative extraction of the different plasmon signals from electron energy-loss spectra, an additional structure, amorphous SiC (a-SiC) was found. Quantitative spectroscopic electron tomography was developed to obtain three dimensional (3D) plasmonic maps. In these 3D spectroscopic maps, the Si regions appear as network structures inside the SiC matrix where the a-SiC appears as an interfacial layer separating the matrix and Si network. The presence of the a-SiC interface can be explained in the framework of the nucleation and growth model. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:5aca51b4-4506-4859-9102-fbc9932a0d5d DOI https://doi.org/10.1039/C7NR00799J ISSN 2040-3364 Source Nanoscale Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2017 L Xie, K. Jarolímek, V. Kocevski, J. Rusz, M. Zeman, R.A.C.M.M. van Swaaij, K Leifer Files PDF c7nr00799j.pdf 2.24 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:5aca51b4-4506-4859-9102-fbc9932a0d5d/datastream/OBJ/view