Thin-film field-effect transistors in hydrogenated amorphous silicon are notoriously unstable due to the formation of silicon dangling bond trapping states in the accumulated channel region during operation. Here, we show that by using a source-gated transistor a major improvement in stability is obtained. This occurs because the electron quasi-Fermi level is pinned near the center of the band ...

We report on the pressure-induced phase transition in a model of paracrystalline silicon ~amorphous silicon with a crystalline grain! using an ab initio constant pressure simulation technique. The paracrystalline model transforms into a high-density amorphous phase at 16 GPa with a discontinuous volume change of ;24%. The transformation of the crystalline grain begins at the boundary and procee...

Reactions of Si(NHMe)4 with ammonia are effectively catalysed by small ammonium triflate concentrations, and can be used to produce free-standing silicon imide gels. Firing at various temperatures produces amorphous or partially crystallised silicon imidonitride/nitride samples with high surface areas and low oxygen contents. The crystalline phase is entirely α-Si3N4 and structural similarities...

Introduction to Thin Film Transistors reviews the operation, application and technology of the main classes of thin film transistor (TFT) of current interest for large area electronics. The TFT materials covered include hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), poly-crystalline silicon (poly-Si), transparent amorphous oxide semiconductors (AOS), and organic semiconductors. The large scale manufa...

A new type of micro-channel plate detector based on hydrogenated amorphous silicon is proposed which overcomes the fabrication and performance issues of glass or bulk silicon ones. This new type of detectors consists in 80-100 μm thick layers of amorphous silicon which are micro-machined by deep reactive ion etching to form the channels. This paper focuses on the structure and fabrication proce...

Modifications are proposed to the Stillinger-Weber potential, a semiempirical interaction potential for silicon. The modifications are specifically intended to improve the description of the amorphous phase. The potential is adjusted to reproduce the location of the transverse optic (TO) and transverse acoustic (TA) peaks of the vibrational density of states. These modifications also lead to ex...

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Using a combination of quantum and classical computational approaches, we model the electronic structure in amorphous silicon in order to gain an understanding of the microscopic atomic configurations responsible for light-induced degradation of solar cells. We demonstrate that regions of strained silicon bonds could be as important as dangling bonds for creating traps for charge carriers. Furt...

We have performed an approximate ab initio calculation of vibrational properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) using a molecular dynamics method. A 216-atom model for pure amorphous silicon (a-Si) has been employed as a starting point for our a-Si:H models with voids that were made by removing a cluster of silicon atoms out of the bulk and terminating the resulting dangling bonds w...

Anode materials of nanostructured silicon have been prepared by physical vapor deposition and characterized using electrochemical methods. The electrodes were prepared in thin-film form as nanocrystalline particles ~12 nm mean diameter! and as continuous amorphous thin films ~100 nm thick!. The nanocrystalline silicon exhibited specific capacities of around 1100 mAh/g with a 50% capacity retent...