EBIC/TEM investigations of defects in solar silicon ribbon materials

Abstract

Transmission electron microscopy was used to investigate the defect structure of edge defined film growth (EFG) material, web dentritic ribbons (WEB), and ribbon to ribbon recrystallized material (RTR). The most common defects in all these materials are coherent first order twin boundaries. These coherent twins can be very thin, a few atomic layers. Bundles of the twins which contain odd numbers of twins will in optical images appear as a seemingly single first twin boundary. First-order coherent twin boundaries are not electrically active, except at locations where they contain intrinsic (grain boundary) dislocations. These dislocations take up small deviations from the ideal twin relation and play the same role in twin boundaries as conventional and play the some role in twin boundaries as conventional edge and screw dislocations in small angle tilt and twist boundaries