The objective of this study is analysing the characteristics of five different solar cell technologies regarding their efficiency, fill factor, cost and environmental impacts and comparing their improvement records over years considering their efficiency. The five solar cell technologies of interest are amorphous silicon, monocrystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, cupper indium gallium selenide thin film and cadmium telluride thin film. The structure and manufacturing process of each of cell technologies were discussed. The study was conducted by the aid of available scientific reports regarding the electrical characteristics of different solar cell technologies. The extracted information regarding efficiency rate and fill factor was analysed using graphs and significant findings are discussed. The five technologies are also compared regarding their cost and ease of fabrication and their impacts on environment and recycling challenges. The result of this study is suggesting the most promising technology that may be the optimal option for further investment and research.

This thesis deals with the silicon etching technology. It Examines using of water solution of potassium hydroxide. It focuses on plasma etching of silicon using mixture of CF4 and O2 as the dry way of etching. Important parameters of etching like etching rate of silicon and masking materials, etching selectivity, surface roughness and underetching of mask are determined for both ways. Some additional processes has been examined as well, namely creating of mask of resist and silicon dioxide, lithography process and etching of resist using oxygen plasma.

The thesis deals with the study and analysis of crystallographic defects on the surface of silicon wafers produced by Czochralski method. It focuses primarily on growth defects and oxygen precipitates, which play an important role in the development of appropriate nucleation centers for growth of stacking faults. The growth of stacking faults near the surface of silicon wafers is supported by their oxidation and selective etching. Such a highlighted stacking faults are known as the OISF (Oxidation Induced Stacking Fault). Spatial distribution of OISF on the wafer gives feedback to the process of pulling silicon single crystal and wafers surface quality. Moreover the work describes the device for automatic detection and analysis of OISF, which was developed for ON Semiconductor company in Rožnov Radhoštěm.

Les cellules à hétérojonctions de silicium fabriquées par croissance de couches minces de silicium amorphe hydrogéné (a-Si :H) à basse température sur des substrats de silicium cristallin (c-Si) peuvent atteindre des rendements de conversion photovoltaïque élevés (η=23 % démontré). Les efforts de recherche ayant principalement été orientés vers le cristallin de type p jusqu'à présent en France, ce travail s'attache à l'étude du type n pour d'une part déterminer les performances auxquelles s'attendre avec cette nouvelle filière et d'autre part les améliorer. Pour cela, nous avons mis en œuvre des techniques de caractérisation des matériaux composant la structure et de l’interface (a-Si :H/c-Si) couplées à des outils de simulations numériques afin mieux comprendre les phénomènes de transport électronique. Nous nous sommes également intéressés aux cellules à hétérojonctions avec substrats de silicium multicristallin de type n, le silicium multicristallin étant le matériau le plus répandu actuellement dans la fabrication des cellules photovoltaïques. / In this thesis we focus on the silicon heterostructure combining thin films amorphous silicon (a-Si :H) deposited at low temperature on crystalline silicon (c-Si) substrates. We study the different materials and the interface between them through both characterizations, modelling and numerical simulations. The goal is to better understand the influence of the different parameters (doping level, defects density, band offset, ...) on the photovoltaic solar cell's performances in order to get them improved. Structures with multicrystalline silicon substrates are also studied.

The aim of the work is to create a coherent overview of the silicon monocrystaline solar cell in terms of the physical principle of the structure and sequence of technological operations necessary for its production. The effect of individual manufacturing steps is discussed in relation to the requirement of decreasing recombination, optical and ohmic losses of the monocrystalline solar cell. Due to a theoretical assumption, one-dimensional model of solar cell was created in a PC1D software that was later optimized to achieve the highest possible efficiency. Using the available technologies, final model of the solar cell is manufactured in Solartec company and in the end of the work compared with the output of simulation.