Amorphous Silicon Research: Annual Subcontract Report, 1 October 1994 - 30 September 1995

This report describes the research performed during the first year of a 3-year contract from NREL to accelerate commercialization of low-cost, high-performance, amorphous-silicon-based multijunction modules. Major accomplishments include (1) the development of a low-cost manufacturable a-Si/a-SiGe tandem junction process with average initial efficiency of 9.6% and average stabilized efficiency of8%, (2) the demonstration of reduced degradation of tandem modules from~17% to~15%, (3) the optimization of hydrogen-diluted i-layer deposition and the development of a two-step i-layer that retains the stability advantages of H-dilution while decreasing the overall deposition time, (4) the development of an improved p-layer made with low growth rate and H2 dilution.