USA, Electrodeposition of silicon

The electrochemical processing group at National Institute of Standards and Technology has a lot of experience in electroplating for the electronics industry. The group worked a lot with electrochemistry in ionic liquids and molten salts. They are also hi ghly skilled in nano technology. Nano crystalline silicon can be made by electrodeposition from an ionic liquid. Electrodepositino of silicon is made impossible in water because the high reactivity of silicon spesies, and the narrow electrochemical windo w of only 1.2 V. New ionic liquids (Room temperature molten salts) have an electrochemical window of up to 6 V, and does not react with silicon species. Compared to other thin film methodes like chemical vapour deposition or physical vapour depositin el ectroplating is also a lot cheaper. In electrochemistry the structure and the size of the deposit can be adjusted by the deposition potential, concentration in the electrolyte or temperature. By electrodeposition at room temperature it should also be poss ible to dope the silicon directely, making it easy to produce multi junction solar cells.