Amorphous silicon alloy photovoltaic research?present and future

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Amorphous silicon alloy has received a great deal of attention as a low-cost material for solar cells and modules. The disorder inherent in the material creates many defect states that impede carrier transport, and the major challenge has been to improve the light-to-electricity conversion efficiency. The most successful method of growing high quality material is by the use of hydrogen dilution in deposition gas mixture which results in a material with improved order. We discuss here the various approaches taken to improve material and device quality that have resulted in stable cell and module efficiencies of 13% and 10·5%, respectively. We also discuss future directions of research.