A study of the effects of microcrystalline silicon i-layer modification near p/i interface in tandem configuration silicon thin film solar cells is presented. The structural properties of the absorber layers were investigated by Raman spectroscopy at different stages of growth. The results indicate the possibility of improving both the nucleation process and the film homogeneity in the direction of growth, without specific re-optimization of the p-layer, transferred from a single-junction microcrystalline silicon cell. Structural modifications of the i-layer have been correlated with performance of tandem solar cells, leading to improvements in the bottom cell current Jsc (up to 11.4 mA/cm2) and initial tandem-cell conversion efficiency (up to 11.3%).
Materials Science and Engineering B 159-160, p. 44-47 (2009)

С учетом размерного фактора межфазной поверхностной энергии приведено аналитическое описание кинетических особенностей формирования системы нанокристаллов при распаде пересыщенных и сверхпересыщенных твердых растворов. Предложенный расчет раскрывает физическую сущность природных явлений, соответствующих фазовому превращению при гомогенном и гетерогенном режиме его протекания. Результаты решения задачи подтверждаются опытными данными. // The kinetics features of nanostructural systems formation at supersaturated and strongly supersaturated solid solution decay has been analytically described, taking into account the size factor of the interfacial energy. The calculation proposed reveals the physical nature of the phenomena, which corresponds to the phase transition in both homogeneous and heterogeneous regimes. The results of the calculation are in good agreement with experimental data.

Effect of diffusion on the steady-state nucleation of two-dimensional nanoislands is described analytically. New approach takes self-consistently into account coupling between the kinetics of adatoms near the island edge, their diffusion on the surface and annihilation at other islands. It was shown that due to this coupling the nucleation barrier can considerably differ from that predicted by the thermodynamics and can depend on the diffusion parameters of adatoms. This effect can be used for controlling of the kinetics of nanoisland nucleation.
Phys. Rev. E 72, 051603 (2005)