Fundamental Study of Sub-Grain Boundaries in Si Multicrystals for Solar Cells(<Special Issue>Crystals Science and Technology of Solar Cells Materials -Concentrated on Crystal Growth-)

Abstract

Generally, Si multicrystals, which are grown by a casting method using a crucible, contain many grain boundaries (GBs) and crystal grains with various orientations. Since the grain size has increased as a result of improving in the growth technique, instead of GBs, sub-grain boundaries (sub-GBs) have become major defects acting as recombination centers for photogenerated carriers. In this paper, study of sub-GBs in Si multicrystals is comprehensively reviewed with the authors' current results.