Device-quality hydrogenated amorphous silicon containing as little as 1/10 the bonded H observed in device-quality glow discharge films have been deposited by thermal decomposition of silane on a heated filament. These low H content films show an Urbach edge width of 50 mV and a spin density of ∼1/100 as large as that of glow discharge films containing comparable amounts of H. High substrate temperatures, deposition in a high flux of atomic H, and lack of energetic particle bombardment are suggested as reasons for this behavior.

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We have carried out a comprehensive study of the Raman spectra of a-Si:H films produced by the glow discharge (GD) and radio frequency sputtering (RFS) deposition techniques. The results show that the short-range disorder (bond-angle deviation), as measured by the width of the TO band (ΓTO), is larger in RFS than in GD a-Si:H films. The intermediate-range disorder (dihedral angle deviation), as measured by the ratio of the intensity of the TA band to that of the TO band (ITA/ITO), is generally larger in RFS than in GD a-Si:H films. However, while the ITA/ITO values of RFS films remain relatively close to those of GD films when the interior is probed, the near surface of RFS films shows much larger values evidencing the existence of a significant disorder gradient along the growth axis. Together, these results indicate that the network order and homogeneity of RFS amorphous silicon is lower than those of GD for substrate temperatures that produce the hydrogenated material. These structural differences are interpreted in terms of the differences between the two film growth processes and are believed to be the reason for the poorer transport properties of RFS a-Si:H films.

To address the yet open question regarding the nature of quantum confinement in Ge nanocrystals (Ge NCs) we employed scanning tunneling spectroscopy to monitor the electronic structure of individual isolated Ge NCs as a function of their size. The (single-particle) band gaps extracted from the tunneling spectra increase monotonically with decreasing nanocrystal size, irrespective of the capping ligands, manifesting the effect of quantum confinement. Band-gap widening of ∼1 eV with respect to the bulk value was observed for Ge-NCs 3 nm in diameter. The picture emerging from comparison with theoretical calculations and other experimental results is discussed.