Phosphorous Doping of Nanostructured Crystalline Silicon

Nano-textured silicon, known as black silicon (bSi), is attractive with excellent photon trapping properties. bSi can be produced using simple one-step fabrication reactive ion etching (RIE) technique. However, in order to use bSi in photovoltaics doping process should be developed. Due to high surface aspect ration (22.25) of bSi to planar surface doping concentration might be slightly higher than on planar surfaces. Therefore, we conducted a study and present recent results of doping of bSi and compared their properties to planar Si. We doped planar, KOH-etched random pyramid and bSi surfaces with phosphorous (POCl3) in the temperature range 850-1000oC for 15 and 20 min, respectively. Sheet resistance measurements show slight differences in doping density between planar, KOH pyramidal and bSi structures. bSi samples have lower sheet resistance, pointing to higher doping density presumably due to the higher surface area. These results can be used to optimize doping processes for industrial application of bSi solar cells.