A study of the band-gap tailoring of amorphous germanium nitrogen alloys is presented. They have been prepared by the rf reactive sputtering technique, using a c-Ge target in an Ar + NH, atmosphere.The alloy composition is found to be strongly dependent on the deposition conditions. The optical gap of the material could be tailored from approximately 1.0 to about 3.0 eV by varying the rf power, substrate temperature, nitrogen and hydrogen partial pressures. The rf power, and not the gas composition, is found to be the most important parameter in determining the nitrogen concentration. The hydrogen concentration, on the other hand, has a small influence on the band gap, while the temperature plays an important role on the determination of the alloy structure.