Liu, AnyaoHameiri, ZivWan, YimaoSun, ChangMacdonald, Daniel2026-07-032026-07-032156-3381ORCID:/0000-0001-5792-7630/work/219174035ORCID:/0000-0003-4579-5495/work/219175234https://hdl.handle.net/1885/733812705This paper investigates and compares the impurity gettering effects of silicon nitride (SiNx) films that are synthesized by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) under various conditions. Both industrial-and laboratory-scale PECVD systems are employed to deposit SiNx films with a wide range of properties (with refractive indices from 1.93 to 2.45 at 632 nm), which covers the entire range of SiNx used for silicon solar cells. The gettering effects are quantified by monitoring the reduction kinetics of the interstitial iron concentration in the silicon wafer bulk as iron becomes gettered to the surface SiNx layers during cumulative annealing at 400 °C. The results show that the very different SiNx films generate similar gettering kinetics, indicating that the impurity gettering effect is likely present in most PECVD SiNx films for silicon solar cells. The gettering kinetics and the SiNx film properties of refractive index, Si-N, Si-H, N-H bond densities, and H content, are found to have no clear correlations.Manuscript received July 19, 2018; revised September 26, 2018; accepted October 9, 2018. Date of publication October 29, 2018; date of current version December 21, 2018. This work was supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency through projects RND017 and 2017/RND001. The work of A. Liu and Y. Wan was supported by the ARENA ACAP postdoctoral fellowship scheme. The work of Z. Hameiri was supported by the Australian Research Council through the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award under Project DE150100268. (Corresponding author: AnYao Liu.) A. Liu, Y. Wan, C. Sun, and D. Macdonald are with the Research School of Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia (e-mail:, anyao.liu@anu. edu.au; yimao.wan@anu.edu.au; chang.sun@anu.edu.au; daniel.macdonald@ anu.edu.au).4enPublisher Copyright: © 2011-2012 IEEE.Getteringironplasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD)silicon nitride201910.1109/JPHOTOV.2018.287587185055704626