Ion beam hydrogenation of amorphous silicon

Abstract

A Kaufman ion beam source was used to implant hydrogen atoms into glow-discharge-deposited amorphous silicon materials in which the hydrogen content had been driven out by heating. We found that the hydrogen atoms introduced by this low-energy (less than 700 eV) ion implantation method bonded predominantly as SiH. An air mass one, photo-to-dark-conductivity ratio as high as 5.6×105 has been obtained with hydrogen-implanted materials. No light-induced reduction of the photo- and dark conductivities has been observed in these materials after 20 h of AMl illumnination.