Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) shows interesting optoelectronic and technological properties that make it suitable for the fabrication of passive and active micro-photonic devices, compatible moreover with standard microelectronic devices on a microchip. A temperature sensor based on a hydrogenated amorphous silicon p-i-n diode integrated in an optical waveguide for silicon photonics a...

Published electron and hole drift-mobility measurements in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), amorphous silicon alloys (a-SiGe:H and a-SiC:H), and microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H) are analysed in terms of the exponential bandtail trapping model. A three-parameter model was employed using an exponential bandtail width E , the band mobility μ0, and the attempt-toescape frequency ν. Low-te...

Luminescent silicon-rich nitride/silicon superlattice structures SRN/Si-SLs with different silicon concentrations were fabricated by direct magnetron cosputtering deposition. Rapid thermal annealing at 700 °C resulted in the nucleation of small amorphous Si clusters that emit at 800 nm under both optical and electrical excitations. The electrical transport mechanism and the electroluminescence ...

Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Al) [AZO] is a good candidate to be used as a transparent conducting oxide [TCO]. For solar cells having a hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide [a-SiC:H] or hydrogenated amorphous silicon [a-Si:H] window layer, the use of the AZO as TCO results in a deterioration of fill factor [FF], so fluorine-doped tin oxide (Sn02:F) [FTO] is usually preferred as a TCO. In th...

Effect of a crystalline-amorphous interface on heat conduction has been studied using atomistic simulations of a silicon system. System with amorphous silicon was created using the bond-switching Monte Carlo simulation method and heat conduction near room temperature was studied by molecular dynamics simulations of this system. INTRODUCTION As the sizes of electronic devices decrease an increas...

The mechanism responsible for deformation-induced crystalline-to-amorphous transition (CAT) in silicon is still under considerable debate, owing to the absence of direct experimental evidence. Here we have devised a novel core/shell configuration to impose confinement on the sample to circumvent early cracking during uniaxial compression of submicron-sized Si pillars. This has enabled large pla...

Positron beam and helium desorption techniques have been applied to different materials, in particular semiconductor materials, to determine the presence of defects. The positron technique yields values of the positron diffusion length and values of the Doppler broadening parameters. In principle, defect concentrations can be derived and an indication can be obtained about the nature of the def...

We use empirical molecular dynamics technique to investigate the low-energy vibrations in a large 4096 atom model for pure amorphous silicon and a set of models with voids of di€erent size based on it. Numerical vibrational eigenvalues and eigenvectors for our models are obtained by exact diagonalization of their dynamical matrices. Our calculations show that localized low-energy vibrational ex...

This paper reports on polysilicon piezo-resistors that are fabricated at a low thermal budget using aluminium-induced-crystallization (AIC) of ultra-high-vacuum e-beam evaporated silicon films. By in-situ phosphorus doping of precursor amorphous silicon films e-beam evaporated at room temperature on aluminium layer, we are able to increase and control the gauge factor of the polysilicon films f...

To choose the most suitable solar cell for desert climate, measurements and analysis of the integrated spectral response (ISR) and the electrical power over 32 spectral bands for monocrystalline, polycrystalline and amorphous solar cells have been carried out in Helwan during several seasons under di€erent environmental conditions. The results of ISR show that while the amorphous silicon solar ...