The sol-gel process for thin film has been proved to be a low cost and high productivity technique, which also provide many advantages like no limitation on size and shape of the coating substrates, simple process and molecular level tailoring of composition and properties. Amorphous and microcrystalline SiC thin films were also prepared from polycarbosilane (PCS) by the sol-gel process. Preliminary results showed that n-type and p-type SiC can be prepared by using doped polycarbosilane (PCS) with good electrical and optical properties. Heat-treatment in hydrogen can drastically decrease the defect concentration of the sol-gel derived silicon carbide. Therefore, device quality hydrogen-induced silicon carbide thin film can be apply on PV cells application. Transparent conductive electrode (ATO, ITO) can also be fabricated by the sol-gel process, which can further decrease the manufacture cost of the PV cells. In this proposal, sol-gel derived hydrogen-induced silicon carbide thin films PV cells has been proposed PV solar cell consist p-i-n layers of hydrogen-induced amorphous or microcrystalline silicon carbide will be prepared on low cost (stainless steel) substrate by the sol-gel process. The transparent conductive electrode will be prepared by their proprietary polymeric oxoalkoxide using the sol-gel process. The PV cells derived from the sol-gel process can be expected to have reasonable conversion efficiency with much lower manufacturing cost than the existing process techniques. Large-scale utilization of solar power can be achieved. More applications on electroptical device are expected from this hydrogen-induced amorphous silicon carbide thin film.
