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Minority-carrier properties of microcrystalline germanium

R. I. BADRAN1,* , R. BRÜGGEMANN2, R. CARIUS3

Affiliation

  1. Physics Department, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Physics Department, The Hashemite University, P.O. Box 150459, Zarqa, Jordan
  2. nstitut für Physik, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany
  3. b Institut für Energieforschung 5 - Photovoltaik, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany

Abstract

The ambipolar diffusion length and the minority-carrier mobility-lifetime products of microcrystalline hydrogenated germanium thin films, prepared by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition, are investigated by using the steady-state photocarrier technique. Different thin film samples were deposited with the dilution of the process gases, germane in hydrogen, GC = [GeH 4 ]/[H 2], between 0.2% to 1%. The minority-carrier mobility-lifetime products are almost temperature independent. These results are consistent with a temperature-independent occupation of the negatively charged recombination centres that is determined by the Fermi level. The longest diffusion length was determined for GC = 0.2%, in agreement with earlier complementary results on sensors..

Keywords

Microcrystalline germanium, Electrical properties, Diffusion length.

Submitted at: Nov. 5, 2008
Accepted at: Oct. 3, 2009

Citation

R. I. BADRAN, R. BRÜGGEMANN, R. CARIUS, Minority-carrier properties of microcrystalline germanium, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 11, Iss. 10, pp. 1464-1466 (2009)