Novellus Systems has declared that it has received the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant together with the University of South Florida (USF) to analyze the specific engineering behind solar cell interfaces’ exact engineering technology.
The company jointly with the University of South Florida (USF) will perform a process of atomic layer deposition using the company’s conformal film deposition (CFD) technology to fabricate the solar photovoltaic (PV) materials.
The company, along with USF has performed a research to develop conformal metal nitride and metal oxide dipole layers in the PV cells, which ensures well-controlled atomic layer film uniformity and thickness. With these developed layers, the band alignment in the cell can be adjusted for optimizing the charge blocking or transfer, resulting in the controlled enhancement of both the voltage and photocurrent in the cell. The research’s main aim is to develop scalable manufacturing solutions for the conformal dipole layers of PV cells. The scalable manufacturing technology helps the manufacturers of PV solar cells to exactly trigger the PV cells’ electronic properties resulting in increased solar power conversion.
The deposition of the company’s CFD films is made using an updated version of the company’s VECTOR plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system, which is deployed globally in semiconductor manufacturing industries. The company’s CFD films can be used in various advanced memory chip and logic applications of the semiconductor industry, including front-end-of-line (FEOL) spacers and liners used in FinFETs and tri-gate transistors, etch stop layers, double patterning and bitline spacers and resistor protect layers.