Recent advances in amorphous and microcrystalline silicon basis devices for optoelectronic applications

Abstract

The current state of the art in recent advances hydrogenated amorphous and microcrystalline silicon (a-Si and μc-Si) technologies and their applications to optoelectronic devices are reviewed. With the recent progress in material preparation and characterization technologies, we now have an age that considerably high quality thin films having valency electron controllability can be produced. In this paper, recent progress in thin film solar cell fabrication with a-Si and μc-Si technologies for active materials for optoelectronic devices are reviewed first, and their significance are pointed out, then some typical newly developed devices such as integrated amorphous solar cells, flexible solar cells etc., are demonstrated. Secondly, new kinds of thin film light-emitting devices, including solid-state flat panel displays are introduced. In the final part of this paper, the remarkable industrial progress in the field of optoelectronics and the prospects of market expansion toward the 21st century are briefly discussed.