A novel ITO/AZO/SiO2/p-Si frame SIS heterojunction fabricated by magnetron sputtering

• Because the ITO/AZO double films lead to a great decrease of the lateral resistance.
• The photon current can easily flow through top film entering the Cu front contact.
• High photocurrent is obtained under a reverse bias.

The novel ITO/AZO/SiO2/p-Si SIS heterojunction has been fabricated by low temperature thermal oxidation an ultrathin silicon dioxide and RF sputtering deposition ITO/AZO double films on p-Si (1 0 0) polished substrate. The microstructural, optical and electrical properties of the ITO/AZO antireflection films were characterized by XRD, SEM, UV–VIS spectrophotometer, four point probe and Hall effect measurement, respectively. The results show that ITO/AZO films are of good quality. And XPS was carried out on the ultrathin SiO2 film. The heterojunction shows strong rectifying behavior under a dark condition, which reveals that formation of a diode between AZO and p-Si. The ideality factor and the saturation current of this diode is 2.7 and 8.68 × 10−5 A, respectively. High photocurrent is obtained under a reverse bias when the crystalline quality of ITO/AZO double films is good enough to transmit the light into p-Si. We can see that under reverse bias conditions the photocurrent of ITO/AZO/SiO2/p-Si SIS heterojunction is much higher than the photocurrent of AZO/SiO2/p-Si SIS heterojunction. Because the high quality crystallite and the good conductivity of ITO film which prepared by magnetron-sputtering on AZO film lead to a great decrease of the lateral resistance. The photon induced current can easily flow through ITO layer entering the Cu front contact. Thus, high photocurrent is obtained under a reverse bias.