Photosensitivity of thin film structures based on amorphous silicon

The photosensitive Me -a-Si:H - Me Schottky barrier structures have been fabricated by DC glow discharge decomposition of silane - helium gas mixture (20% SiH/sub 4/ + 80% He) in a planar magnetron type reactor. Thin semitransparent Au and Ni layers were used as metal layers. This study has shown new features of Me -a-Si:H - Me structure. The open circuit voltage under monochromatic illumination becomes independent of photon flux for all values of flux density greater than 10/sup 14/ cm/sup -2/c/sup -l/, and depends only on wavelength. This has been explained by a physical model of photovoltaic process in thin film detectors. Calculated values of open circuit voltage verses wavelength demonstrate a good agreement with experimental results. Such structures consisting of two contrary connected Schottky diodes can be used as a solid state spectral detector. (author)