The electrochemical etching of porous silicon offers many diverse opportunities for production of complex porous silicon structures located not only on the surface but also in a bulk of the silicon devices. A specific technological regime, the photo-electrochemical etching can affect bulk of the silicon device but at the same time saving its textured surface almost unchanged. Our group is the first who investigated the silicon solar cells with textured surface modified by means of photo-electrochemical etching. Etched devices demonstrated better photoelectrical characteristics if compare ones with unmodified solar cells. Our current work presents results on research of solar cells photoelectrochemically treated in HF: ethanol solution. Applied etching regime allowed us to modify the emitter’s volume at the same time affecting only minimally the surface of the solar cell itself. SEM micrographs show the elevations, ripples, bumps, cracks etc. on the surface of photo-electrochemically treated solar cells. The optical ellipsometer spectra, optical microscope measurements results, SEM micrographs of surface morphology as well as light reflectivity of the photoelectrochemically treated and untreated surfaces of the solar cells investigated and discussed in this work.
We report on possibility to detect pulsed microwave radiation across the metal/oxide/porous silicon structures and analyse possible physical reasons causing the rise of the emf voltage signal. The n-type porous layers were fabricated according to conventional electrochemical etching procedure, and were exposed to pulsed 10 GHz microwave radiation. The results of investigation show that the porous Si samples have higher by at least one order voltage-to-power sensitivity than the samples without the porous layer, and are considered to have high potential to increase it further. Free carrier heating phenomenon is considered to be responsible for the signal formation.
Two-terminal diode-like porous silicon structures have been investigated under the impact of strong electric field. Strong
electric field I-V current-voltage characteristics have been measured in pulse regime by applying electric pulses of 15 ns
duration, at repetition rate of (100-150) Hz, creating average electric field in the structure up to (103-104) V/cm. Modification of structured state of the structures have been revealed at strong electric field influence, resulting in change
and stabilizing of their series resistance.
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