Dielectric thin films have a long history in silicon photovoltaics. Due to the specific physical properties, they can function as passivation layer in solar cells. Also, they can be used as antireflection coating layers on top of the devices. They can improve the back surface reflectance if proper dielectric layers combination is used. What??s more, they can protect areas by masking during chemical etching, diffusion, metallization among the whole fabrication process. Crystalline silicon solar cell can be passivated by two ways: one is to deposit dielectric thin films to saturate the dangling bonds; the other is to introduce surface electrical field and repel back the minority carriers. This thesis explores thermally grown SiO2 and sputtered Si3N4(:H) to passivate n-type and thermal evaporation AlF3 to passivate p-type Float Zone silicon wafers, respectively. Sputtering is a cheap passivation method to replace PECVD in industry usage, but all sputtered samples are more likely to have encountered surface damage from neutral Ar and secondary electrons, both coming from the sputtered target. AlF3/SiO2 multi-layer stack is a negative charge combination; p inversion layer will form on the wafer surface. Light trapping is an important part in solar cell research work. In order to enhance the reflectance and improve the absorption possibility of near infrared photons, especially for high efficiency PERL cell application, the back surface structure is optimized in this work. Results show SiO2/Ag is a very good choice to replace SiO2/Al back reflectors. The maximum back surface reflectance is 97.82%. At the same time, SiO2/Ag has excellent internal angle dependence of reflectance, which is beneficial for surface textured cells. A ZnS/MgF2/SiO2/Al(Ag) superlattice can improve the back reflectance, but it is sensitive to incident angle inside the silicon wafer. If planar wafers are used to investigate all kinds of back reflectors, and an 8 degrees incident angle is fixed for typical spectrometry measurement, the results are easy to predict by Wvase software simulation. If a textured surface is considered, the light path inside the silicon wafer is very complicated and hard to calculate and simulate. The best way to evaluate the result is through experiment.

Thesis ( Ph.D) -- McMaster University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (M. Env. St.)--University of Adelaide, Centre for Environmental Studies, 1989. / Two coloured folded plates in pocket. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-107).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1990. / Spine title: Bidirectional spectral reflectance field instrument. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69).

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on October 2, 2009). Thesis advisor: Dr. Peter C. Scharf. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 85 p. : ill. (some col.), col. map. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-82).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-96).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D., Chemistry)--University of Idaho, December 2006. / Major professor: Peter R. Griffiths. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online (PDF file) by subscription or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1992. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [247]-251).