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Reduction of defects by network self-organizations in non-crystalline dielectrics and semiconductors: a tribute to Professor Radu Grigorovici on the occasion of his 95th birthday

G. LUCOVSKY1, J. C. PHILLIPS2,*

Affiliation

  1. Department of Physics, NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8202, USA
  2. Department of Physics, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA

Abstract

This review paper has been penned to celebrate the 95th birthday of Professor Radu Grigorovici. He is truly on of the giants in the field, providing significant seminal insights into the bonding and electronic structure of non-crystalline solids. These have proved to be the foundation for the development of many of the device applications addressed in this paper, and equally important as a source of inspiration to those of us who have developed an increased understanding of this technologically important class of solids. Studies of binary chalcogenide alloys have established that the onset of network rigidity is generally delayed by a network self-organization resulting in an intermediate phase with significant deviations from mean-field chemical bonding. In GexSe1-x, the onset of local chemical bonding rigidity occurs for a mean-field coordination, rc = 2.4 at x = 0.2, but percolation of stress resulting in network rigidity is delayed until rc = 2.52. This paper demonstrates that low levels of electrically active defects in i) gate dielectrics for (a) thin film transistors (TFTs) in liquid crystal displays (LCDs), and (b) aggressively-scaled metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs), The driving for force for this self-organizations is the suppression of macroscopic strain that presents an energy-favorable trade-off between changes in configurational entropy and reductions in macroscopic strain energy..

Keywords

Thin film dielectrics, Thin film amorphous semiconductors, a-Si thin film transistors, c-Si field effect transistors, photovoltaic devices, Strain relieving network self-organizations, Intermediate phases, Chemically-order bonding, Hydrogenated silicon nitrides, Zr Si oxynitrides, Hydrogenated amorphous silicon.

Submitted at: Oct. 11, 2006
Accepted at: Nov. 2, 2006

Citation

G. LUCOVSKY, J. C. PHILLIPS, Reduction of defects by network self-organizations in non-crystalline dielectrics and semiconductors: a tribute to Professor Radu Grigorovici on the occasion of his 95th birthday, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 8, Iss. 6, pp. 1969-1978 (2006)