A new photoconductive detector utilizing an amorphous silicon film grown by CVD is demonstrated to have a response time of 40 ps. An estimate of the carrier mobility suggests a mechanism involving the rapid relaxation of photoexcited carriers from relatively mobile extended states to immobile localized states.

It is shown that heat treatment in a hydrogen plasma of pure amorphous silicon films prepared by UHV evaporation yields a material with no observable dangling bond ESR signal. This material has electrical properties similar to films prepared by a glow-discharge decomposition of silane but a lower hydrogen content as deduced from ir absorption data.

No abstract