Techniques for measuring the composition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon-germanium alloys

Conference · Mon Oct 25 00:00:00 EDT 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3093(99)00848-0· OSTI ID:752521

Nelson, B P; Xu, Y; Webb, J D; Mason, A; Reedy, R C; Gedvilas, L M; Lanford, W A

The authors grow hydrogenated amorphous silicon-germanium alloys by the hot-wire chemical vapor deposition technique at deposition rates between 0.5 and 1.4 nanometers per second. They prepared a set of these alloys to determine the concentrations of the alloying elements as measured by various techniques. This set consists of samples throughout the range of germanium alloying from 0% (a-Si:H) to 100% (a-Ge:H). They find that by making the appropriate calibrations and corrections, their compositional measurements agreement between the various techniques. Nuclear reaction analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) all yield similar hydrogen contents, within {+-}20% for each sample. Electron probe micro-analysis (EPMA) and SIMS yield silicon and germanium contents within {+-}7% of each other with results being confirmed by Rutherford backscattering. EPMA oxygen measurements are affected by highly oxidized surface layers, thus these data show larger O concentrations than those measured by SIMS.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-99GO10337
• OSTI ID: 752521
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP--520-26933
• Resource Type: Conference paper/presentation
• Conference Information: International Conference of Amorphous and Microcrystalline Semiconductors, Snowbird, UT (US), 05/22/1999--05/29/1999
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
AMORPHOUS SILICON-GERMANIUM (A-SIGE:H)
AMORPHOUS STATE
CHEMICAL COMPOSITION
CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION
ELECTRON MICROPROBE ANALYSIS
ELECTRON PROBE MICRO ANALYSIS (EPMA)
G150
GERMANIUM SILICIDES
HOT-WIRE C185 (HWCVD)
I160
HYDROGENATION
MASS SPECTROSCOPY
MICROSTRUCTURE
NUCLEAR REACTION ANALYSIS
NUCLEAR REACTION ANALYSIS (NRA)
R190
S130
S180