Thirty years trajectory of amorphous and nanocrystalline silicon materials and their optoelectronic devices

A review is given on research trajectory of hydrogenated amorphous and nanocrystalline silicon (a-Si:H and nc-Si) materials with their device applications ongoing since the period of 1970. A brief explanation on the motivation to start amorphous semiconductors research is given to produce a new kind of synthetic semiconductor having continuous energy gap controllability with valency electron controllability. Due to the result of some basic research on the film quality improvement of a-Si:H and ne-Si, some innovative devices had been developed since middle of 1980s in R&D phase such as a-SiC/a-Si heterojunction solar cells, a-Si/a-SiGe and also a-Si/nc-Si tandem type solar cells. Finally, the state of the art on the industrialization of the new devices is introduced and discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.