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Fluctuation Microscopy Studies of Medium-range Order Structures in Amorphous Tetrahedral Semiconductors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2011

Xidong Chen ,
J. Murray Gibson ,
John Sullivan ,
Tom Friedmann  and
Paul Voyles
Xidong Chen
Affiliation:
Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439
J. Murray Gibson
Affiliation:
Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439
John Sullivan
Affiliation:
Nanostructure and Semiconductor Physics Department, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185-1421
Tom Friedmann
Affiliation:
Nanostructure and Semiconductor Physics Department, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185-1421
Paul Voyles
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of Illinois, 1110 West Green St., Urbana, IL 61801 and NEC Research Institute
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Abstract

We applied fluctuation microscopy technique to study medium-range order in tetrahedral semiconductor materials, such as amorphous silicon, amorphous diamond-like carbon films. It is shown that this technique is very sensitive to local structure changes in the medium range order and promises solutions to open questions that cannot be answered by current techniques. For asdeposited amorphous germanium and silicon, we previously identified a fine-grain para-crystallite structure [1, 2], which will be relaxed into a lower-energy continuous random network structure after thermal annealing. With the same fluctuation microscopy technique, we however found that thermal annealing introduces medium-range order in amorphous diamond-like carbon films. Future studies will be focused on modeling and systematic exploration of annealing effects.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 638: Symposium F – Microcrystaline & Nanocrystalline Semiconductors-2000 , 2000 , F14.40.1
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2001

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References

1. Gibson, J. M. and Treacy, M.M.J., “Diminished Medium-Range Order Observed in Annealed Amorphous Germanium”, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 78, pp. 1074, February 1997.Google Scholar
2. Volyes, Paul, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000.Google Scholar
3. Robertson, J., “Hard Amorphous (Diamond-like) Carbons”, Progress in Solid State Chemistry, Vol. 21, pp. 199, 1991 Google Scholar
4. Goodman, J.W. “Statistical Properties of Laser Speckle Patterns”, in “Laser Speckle and Related Phenomena” Editor: Dainty, J.C., Springer-Verlag, 1984.Google Scholar