Plasma immersion ion implantation as an alternative to diffusion and beam-line implantation for creating phosphorus doped emitters and selective emitters

The plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) can be used to implant phosphorus ions into the silicon surface. Therefore it is a possible alternative to other doping techniques as phosphorus diffusion or beam implantation. For a successful implantation into a solar cell processing line, some obstacles that are dealt with in this contribution have to be overcome. We are investigating possible paths for the activation and annealing step that is necessary for getting sufficient sheet resistances and we are correlating processing parameters to solar cell parameters as doping profiles, emitter saturation currents and solar cell efficiencies, both for mono- and multicrystalline wafers. Furthermore we are investigating the possibility of a laser assisted selective emitter process.