Localized oxidation influence from conductive atomic force microscope measurement on nano-scale I-V characterization of silicon thin film solar cells

Nano-scale current–voltage (I-V) characteristics of hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H) prepared by Hot-Wire CVD (HWCVD) technique have been studied by Conductive Atomic Force Microscope (Conductive-AFM) under atmospheric conditions. It is demonstrated that a local modification is caused by the current, detected as a dramatic decrease in the forward biased current of I-V characteristics with the number of repeated scans. On the other hand, smaller change of reverse biased current is observed after the repeated scans. On the base of these results, we discuss and demonstrate the validity of our proposed new junction characterization method at the nanometer scale; that is, simultaneous nano-scale Topographical and Current–Voltage Imaging (TCVI) for Silicon (Si) thin film solar cells.