Highly conductive and highly transparent n-type microcrystalline silicon thin films

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present data on the dependence of the electro-optical characteristics and structure of n-type microcrystalline silicon films on the r.f. power used during the deposition of films produced by the plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition technique. The interest of these films arise from the fact that they combine some electro-optical advantages of amorphous (wide optical gap) and crystalline materials (electronic behaviour), highly interesting in the production of a wide variety of optoelectronic devices such as solar cells and thin film transistors. In this paper, microcrystalline n-type films presenting simultaneously optical gaps of about 2.3 eV, dark conductivity of 6.5 S cm −1 and Hall mobility of about 0.86 cm 2 V −1 s −1 will be reported, the highest combined values for n-type microcrystalline silicon films, as far as we know.