Home

Person

Sylvain Nicolay

This person is no longer with EPFL

About
Privacy
Disclaimer

Graph Chatbot

Related publications (68)

Tailoring the surface morphology of zinc oxide films for high-performance micromorph solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Lorenzo Fanni, Monica Morales Masis

Self-textured zinc oxide polycrystalline films prepared by metalorganic low-pressure chemical vapor deposition combine excellent transparency, conductivity and light-scattering ability when used as electrodes for high-efficiency thin-film silicon solar cel ...

Elsevier2014

Copper and transparent-conductor reflectarray elements on thin-film solar cell Panels

Christophe Ballif, Julien Perruisseau-Carrier, Sylvain Nicolay, Monica Morales Masis

This work addresses the task of integrating reflectarray antennas on thin-film solar cell panels, as a means to save real estate, weight or cost of platforms, such as satellites or transportable autonomous antenna systems. Reflectarray unit cell families, ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2014

Optical properties of anodically degraded ZnO

Christophe Ballif, Sylvain Nicolay

We discuss the optical properties of non-degraded and anodically degraded boron-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:B) deposited by low-pressure chemical vapour deposition on soda-lime glass. The optical model used to simulate the infrared reflectance in the wavelength ...

American Institute of Physics2014

Post-deposition treatment of microcrystalline silicon solar cells for improved performance on rough superstrates

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Grégory Bugnon, Mathieu Gérard Boccard

In this contribution, we investigate the effect of post-deposition treatments on finished non-encapsulated thin-film microcrystalline silicon solar cells and show that annealing in vacuum leads to improved electrical properties of the solar cells, particul ...

American Institute of Physics2014

c-texture versus a-texture low pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition ZnO films: Lower resistivity despite smaller grain size

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Arthur Brian Aebersold, Duncan Thomas Lindsay Alexander, Lorenzo Fanni, Monica Morales Masis

Recently, it has been shown that it is possible to tune the morphology of zinc oxide films deposited by low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (LP-MOCVD) while preserving good electrical conductivity. Here a closer look is taken at films depos ...

Elsevier2014

Hydrogen plasma treatment for improved conductivity in amorphous aluminum doped zinc tin oxide thin films

Christophe Ballif, Aïcha Hessler-Wyser, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Quentin Thomas Jeangros, Fabien Paul Jacques Dauzou, Monica Morales Masis

Improving the conductivity of earth-abundant transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) remains an important challenge that will facilitate the replacement of indium-based TCOs. Here, we show that a hydrogen (H-2)-plasma post-deposition treatment improves the co ...

Amer Inst Physics2014

High-performance tandem silicon solar cells on F:SnO2

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay

High-performance transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) have significance for optimising PV performance. The efficiency of the resulting solar cells is dependent particularly on achieving high light scattering, low resistivity and low absorption (via low fre ...

Elsevier2013

Ethanol-enriched low-pressure chemical vapor deposition ZnO bilayers: Properties and growth-A potential electrode for thin film solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Grégory Bugnon

Ethanol is used as a precursor during the growth of zinc oxide (ZnO) by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD). By adding ethanol, the surface of the deposited ZnO layer is flattened and its roughness is decreased about sevenfold. The layers become ...

American Institute of Physics2013

Relaxing the Conductivity/Transparency Trade-Off in MOCVD ZnO Thin Films by Hydrogen Plasma

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay

Increasing the conductivity of polycrystalline zinc oxide films without impacting the transparency is a key aspect in the race to find affordable and high quality material as replacement of indium-containing oxides. Usually, ZnO film conductivity is provid ...

Wiley-Blackwell2013

Highly transparent ZnO bilayers by LP-MOCVD as front electrodes for thin-film micromorph silicon solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Grégory Bugnon, Mathieu Gérard Boccard, Matthieu Despeisse, Mustapha Benkhaira

ZnO bilayer films were deposited by a low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition technique in a single process step, by doping with boron only the nucleation stage of the growth. The resulting 2 pm thick layers are characterized by low free carrie ...

Elsevier2012

Light Harvesting Schemes for High Efficiency Thin Film Silicon Solar Cells

Christophe Ballif, Mathieu Charrière, Peter Cuony, Gaetano Parascandolo, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Grégory Bugnon, Mathieu Gérard Boccard, Matthieu Despeisse, Corsin Battaglia, Jordi Escarre Palou, Michael Elias Stückelberger, Maximilien Joseph Marie Bonnet-Eymard

In Thin Film Silicon (TF-Si) solar cells light harvesting schemes must guarantee an efficient light trapping in the thin absorber layers without decreasing the silicon layers quality and consecutively the p-i-n diodes electrical performance. TF-Si solar ce ...

Ieee2012

The development of high performance SnO2:F as TCOs for thin film silicon solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay

High performance transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) have significance for optimising photovoltaic (PV) performance. The efficiency of the resulting solar cells is dependent particularly on achieving high light scattering, low resistivity and low absorpti ...

Elsevier2012

Geometric light trapping for high efficiency thin film silicon solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Grégory Bugnon, Franz-Josef Haug, Matthieu Despeisse, Corsin Battaglia, Jordi Escarre Palou

The imprinting of random square based pyramidal textures with micrometric scale at the air/glass interface of thin film silicon solar cells is presented as an efficient alternative to anti-reflective coatings to minimize reflection losses at the cell entra ...

Elsevier2012

LPCVD ZnO-based intermediate reflector for micromorph tandem solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Thomas Söderström, Laura Ding, Sylvain Nicolay, Grégory Bugnon, Matthieu Despeisse

The use of zinc oxide (ZnO) based intermediate reflector (ZIR) in micromorph solar cells using low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) was investigated. The influences of deposition temperature and dopant gas concentration on grain size and lateral ...

2011

ZnO Transparent conductive oxide for thin film silicon solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Sylvie Faÿ, Thomas Söderström, Andrea Feltrin, Peter Cuony, Sylvain Nicolay, Grégory Bugnon, Franz-Josef Haug, Mathieu Gérard Boccard, Matthieu Despeisse

There is general agreement that the future production of electric energy has to be renewable and sustainable in the long term. Photovoltaic (PV) is booming with more than 7GW produced in 2008 and will therefore play an important role in the future electric ...

Spie-Int Soc Optical Engineering, Po Box 10, Bellingham, Wa 98227-0010 Usa2010

Nanoscale Analysis by EFTEM and FIB-Tomography for Optimization of Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Christophe Ballif, Marco Cantoni, Peter Cuony, Sylvain Nicolay, Duncan Thomas Lindsay Alexander

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press2010

Polycrystalline ZnO:B grown by LPCVD as TCO for thin film silicon solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Sylvie Faÿ, Sylvain Nicolay

Conductive zinc oxide (ZnO) grown by low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) technique possesses a rough surface that induces an efficient light scattering in thin film silicon (TF Si) solar cells, which makes this TCO an ideal candidate for contact ...

2010

LPCVD GROWTH OF ZNO FOR SOLAR CELL APPLICATIONS

Christophe Ballif, Sylvie Faÿ, Sylvain Nicolay

A growth model for the low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) of polycrystalline ZnO thin films is proposed. This model is based on experimental observations of the surface morphology and crystallographic orientations of the layers at different thi ...

2009

Growth model of MOCVD polycrystalline ZnO

Christophe Ballif, Sylvie Faÿ, Sylvain Nicolay

2009

Physics and applications of intersubband transitions in nitride based heterostructures

Sylvain Nicolay

In the past decades, III-nitride semiconductor compounds have attracted an increasing amount of interest due to their applications to blue-violet laser diodes and white light emitting diodes, or for their use as ultraviolet emitting devices for biomedical ...

EPFL2008

Page 3 of 4