Improved PECVD processed hydrogenated germanium films through temperature induced densification

Amorphous and nano-crystalline germanium is of potential interest for a wide range of electronic, optical, opto-electronic and photovoltaic applications. In this work the influence of deposition temperature on hydrogenated germanium (Ge:H) films was characterized, using over 200 Ge:H and over 70 SiGe:H films. The demonstrated temperature...

Opto-Electrical Properties of Group IV Alloys: The Inherent Challenges of Processing Hydrogenated Germanium

In this paper the opto-electrical nature of hydrogenated group IV alloys with optical bandgap energies ranging from 1.0 eV up to 2.3 eV are studied. The fundamental physical principles that determine the relation between the bandgap and the structural characteristics such as material density, elemental composition, void fraction and...

PECVD Processing of low bandgap-energy amorphous hydrogenated germanium-tin (a-GeSn:H) films for opto-electronic applications

An alloy based on the group IV elements germanium and tin has the potential of yielding an earth-abundant low bandgap energy semiconductor material with applications in the fields of micro-electronics, optics, photonics and photovoltaics. In this work, the first steps towards the plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) processing of a...

Development of the low bandgap materials Ge:H and GeSn:H by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition

The development in solar cells began with wafer based cells, also called the first generation photovoltaic technology. Most of these wafer based cells were made of crystalline silicon. As a crystalline silicon cell must be relatively thick to absorb most of the incoming energy, the second generation (thin film solar cells) was introduced. In the...