Chien-Kuo Hsieh

Epitaxial growth of heavily boron-doped Si by Al(B)-induced crystallisation at low temperature for back surface field manufacturing

P-type polycrystalline Si film on a foreign substrate can be fabricated at temperatures lower than 773 K by an aluminium-induced crystallisation process. However, the ultimate carrier concentration of the Si film is limited to approximately 3 × 1018 cm−3 because of the low solid solubility of Al in Si at temperatures below 773 K. In this study, a process called B-AIC is developed in which boron is co-doped with Al to increase the carrier concentration in Si films to ∼1019 cm−3 at temperatures as low as 673 K. The carrier concentration can be tuned by the initial thickness of a-Si layer in the B-AIC process. Beside the fabrication of polycrystalline Si film on glass, the epitaxial growth of this heavily doped p++-Si film can also be realized on a single crystalline Si wafer via a solid phase epitaxy mechanism.

Enhanced electrocatalytic activities of pulse-mode potentiostatic electrodeposited single-crystal, fern-like Pt nanorods

Single-crystal and fern-like Pt nanorods (Pt-NR) were electrodeposited on carbon paper. The electrocatalytic activity of prepared Pt-NR electrodes, as determined by the catalyst mass activity (MA) and specific activity (SA) for the methanol oxidation reaction, are respectively 4.59 times and 10.54 times better than that of a commercial Pt-black catalyst.