Recovering Functional Properties of Solution Processed Silicon Thin-Films

Solution processed technologies are more and more used to lower the manufacturing prices in solar cell industry. This paper shows that silicon nanoparticles dispersion has the potential to be used as raw material for microcrystalline silicon thin-film thus opening a route for solution processed silicon devices. Restoring of functional properties of deposited film by classical thermal annealing and microwave annealing is led. Both recovering techniques are studied in terms of morphology as well as electrical and optical properties. Surface chemistry of the nanoparticles is shown to have a major role on the stability of the dispersion, the deposition and sintering processes.