Fabrication Of Silver Nanoparticles And Films By Magnetron Sputtering And Its Application On Black Silicon

Silver nanoparticles have great potential for the applications in solar cells, i.e. it canbroaden the absorption spectrum of solar cell by its localized surface plasmon resonance.Usually, it is difficult to integrate silver nanoparticles into large-area solar cell thoughchemical process. In this paper, the silver nanoparticles with different size，shape anddistribution were prepared using magnetron sputtering method. By using silvernanoparticles as micromask, we studied the mechanism of forming the light-trappingnano-structure on the silicon wafers. Finally, highly (100)-oriented Pt films were grown onthe silicon substrates by using silver film as bufferlayer.The nanohill structure was fabricated on a silicon surface via a micromask formedwith silver nanoparticles by radio-frequency magnetron sputtering deposition, followed bya dry etching under SF6plasma. The proposed technique does not rely on oxygen gas,eliminating damages from oxygen plasma and increasing lifetime of the silicon crystal.The experiments indicate that the morphology and particle size distribution of silvernanoparticles determine the reflectivity of the textured silicon wafer. Interestingly, thenanohill structure exhibits stronger light confinement ability than columnar one, leading tolow reflectivity. A longer minority carrier lifetime is measured in such nanohill structuresfabricated with no oxygen plasma, reflecting low defect concentration on the surface. Thiswork provides a pathway to fabricating black silicon of excellent light confinementstructure, which may have potential for applications in some localized surfaceplasmons-relavant areas.In addition, we have also prepared (100)Pt/Ag/Si substrates, which is vitallyimportant for the epitaxial growth of subsequent functional films.