No abstract

Device-quality hydrogenated amorphous silicon containing as little as 1/10 the bonded H observed in device-quality glow discharge films have been deposited by thermal decomposition of silane on a heated filament. These low H content films show an Urbach edge width of 50 mV and a spin density of ∼1/100 as large as that of glow discharge films containing comparable amounts of H. High substrate temperatures, deposition in a high flux of atomic H, and lack of energetic particle bombardment are suggested as reasons for this behavior.

Thirty different binary metal oxide glasses having the metaphosphate composition have been prepared containing cations from the following groups: alkali metals, alkaline earths, transition metals, and lanthanide and actinide metals. Far infrared absorption assigned to the cation vibration in its oxygen cage has been measured for these glasses. Empirical ionic models are proposed correlating the absorption maximum with the cation mass, charge, and ionic radius. Discrepancies between the observed and predicted vibrational frequency indicate a more covalent interaction between the metal cation and the glass network. Raman intensities and vibrational frequencies of the network metaphosphate vibrations have been obtained and provide additional evidence about the cation–site interaction.

We have measured the low temperature internal friction ͑Q 21 ͒ of amorphous silicon ͑a-Si͒ films. e-beam evaporation or 28 Si 1 implantation leads to the temperature-independent Q 21

Transition films from amorphous (a-) to microcrystalline (μc-) silicon were prepared by hot-wire chemical vapor deposition using silane decomposition with either varied hydrogen-to-silane ratio, R, or with fixed R=3 but a varied substrate temperature, Ts. Raman results indicate that there is a threshold for the structural transition from a- to μc-Si:H in both cases. The onset of the structural transition is found to be R≈2 at Ts=250 °C and Ts≈200 °C at R=3. The properties of the material were studied by infrared absorption, optical absorption, photoluminescence (PL), and conductivity temperature dependence. We observed that the peak frequency of the SiH wag mode remains at 630−640 cm−1 for all the films, but the hydrogen content shows two regimes of fast and slow decreases separated by the onset of microcrystallinity. When microcrystallinity increased, we observed that (a) the SiO vibration absorption at 750 cm−1 and 1050−1200 cm−1 appeared, (b) the relative intensity of the 2090 cm−1 absorption increased, (c) the low-energy optical absorption at photon energy <1.4 eV increased one to two orders of magnitude, (d) the low-energy PL band at ∼1.0 eV emerged with a decrease of total PL intensity, and (e) the conductivity activation energy decreased. The aforementioned changes correlated well with the crystallinity of the material. We attribute the observations mainly to the formation of the c-Si gain boundaries during crystallization.