Chapter 1

Chapter 1:
Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

History of civilization is intimately connected with advances in material research. Materials, in

a broad sense, can be classified into crystalline and amorphous materials. A perfect crystalline
material has a translational symmetry and a unit cell, when extended in three dimensions give
the structure of the material. Unlike the case of crystalline materials, amorphous materials lack
the long-range periodicity. The lack of long range order in amorphous material results in an
absence of true Bloch states which consequently lowers the electron mobility and conductivity.
Also, amorphous are difficult and in some cases impossible to dope. Adopting the absence of
long-range order as an essential aspect, non-crystalline, liquid-like, glass, vitreous and
amorphous are often used as synonymous. Due to the disordered nature of the amorphous
materials, it was believed that they will not find any technological applications.
In 1955 Kolomiets and his collaborators [1] have shown that amorphous chalcogenide glasses
are semiconductors. It was difficult at that time to understand why amorphous materials;
characterised by the lack of lattice periodicity, have an energy gap. In 1960, Loffe and Regel
[2] suggest that the band gap depends on the existence of short-range order rather than on the
long-range order of the lattice. These discoveries made evolutionary changes in attracting
interest of scientists and engineers all over the world toward amorphous materials. Ovshinsky
and his co-workers [3,4] discovered the memory and switching effects exhibited by some
amorphous semiconductors (a-semiconductors). This discovery made possibility of
commercial utilizations of a-semiconductors. Following Ovshinsky’s discovery, first
commercial available amorphous semiconductor-based electronic device, a non-volatile digital
memory, was developed in 1968. Another significant event in the development of the subject
was made in the 70’s by the introduction of hydrogen in the lattice of a-Si, by the
decomposition of SiH4 [5] or with the incorporation of H2 in the sputtering gas [6] reduced
drastically the middle gap states, improved the photoconductive properties and made possible
the doping of a-Si:H. It provides a further boost to the interest in the field and leading to
industrial production of large area, thin-film photovoltaic solar cells with relative high
efficiencies [7, 8]. Amorphous Materials was founded to serve as a source of IR materials or
(IR glass) to be used as optical materials for night vision systems. Amorphous semiconductors
are important in the areas of large area electronics, although because of the low free-carrier
ISBN: 978-81-936820-2-9 1 Series: AIJR Thesis
Thesis DOI: 10.21467/thesis.2
 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

mobility some of the associated circuitry requires re-crystallization. As we increase the degree
of perfection the long-range structural order gives rise to well define electronic band
structures. This leads into the possibilities of band structure engineering as a result thin film
transistors and other devices now widely used in the electronic industry [9, 10].
In thermodynamic point of view amorphous solid is in non-equilibrium states, i.e. in
metastable states which are brought out by different conditions during formation process.
Since amorphous phase is less thermodynamically stable, it possesses greater free energy
compared to its corresponding crystalline states. Due to the metastability of the structure of
a-semiconductors, its structure and bond configurations are not fixed and hence, can be
changed sometimes reversibly by heat, light, electric field or any other irradiation. As a
consequence, certain of these materials exhibit unique optical and electronic properties. As
optical components a-semiconductors have a wide range of photo-induced effects. These
photo-induced effects have found major applications. The energy and material cost involved
in producing amorphous thin films is significantly lower than for comparable crystalline
material [11, 12]. Amorphous semiconductors represent a large and important area in materials
science, with interest both from the technological and fundamental point of view. There are
two groups of a-semiconductors that are of most commercial interest: (1) Tetrahedrally
bonded a-semiconductors, and of these the most important member is hydrogenated
amorphous silicon, a-Si:H, (2) Chalcogenide Glasses, which contain considerable proportion
of one or more of chalcogen elements (Selenium, Tellurium and Sulphur)

1.1 The Atomic Structure of Amorphous Solids

Amorphous solids do not have long range periodicity in their arrangement of its atoms; they
are best defined when compared to a crystalline solid which has a distinctive regular spatial
arrangement of atoms throughout the whole material. Although their structure appears
random over the long range, an amorphous substance still has a high degree of short range
spatial order in its atomic structure. This is because individual atoms in an amorphous solid
must still fulfil their requirement for valence bonding. However, unlike their crystalline
counterpart, there are some small deviations in the bonding angles between adjacent atoms
and this leads to a disruption of the periodicity in the material. Figure 1.1 illustrates the
difference between a crystalline and an amorphous solid.

Figure 1.1: schematic of the

structure of (a) a crystalline solid
and (b) an amorphous solid.
(Atoms marked “O” represent over-
coordinated atoms with more than usual
numbers of bonding with adjacent atoms
and “U” represent under-coordinated atoms
with less than the usual number of bonds
(a) with adjacent atoms) (b)

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 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

Due to lack of periodicity understanding the structure of amorphous solids and the
relationship between the structure and observed macroscopic material properties have been
one of the fundamental problems. Despite the lack of periodicity, the structure of amorphous
solids possesses a considerable degree of ordering. To understand disorder in amorphous
solids on the basis of atomic scale ordering, short range order (SRO), medium range order
(MRO) and long-range order (LRO) concepts have been developed. For a solid in the
crystalline state the characteristic structure has a well-defined symmetry or periodicity in which
the exact orientation and number of neighbours can be determined from one atom to the next
as the simplistic two-dimensional representation of a crystal shows in figure 1.1 (a). This is
known as long range order (LRO). The structure of amorphous solid possess short range order (SRO)
however, chemical forces acted in both amorphous and crystalline solids are same. Due to
fluctuations in bonds angle and bond length, the SRO in amorphous solids is not perfectly
identical to the crystal. In amorphous state atoms have sufficient energy to frequently bend,
twist, make and break bonds, causing a disordered bond geometry that is not periodic as shown
in Figure 1.1 (b). For a glass or amorphous structure, the organization of each atom is well
defined because each atom must fulfil its chemical bonding requirements, but the entire
arrangement lacks long range order. Concept of medium range order (MRO) [13] arises mainly
due to existence of an extended order in amorphous solids that extends above the SRO limit.
The MRO is specific and well evidenced in Chalcogenide glasses. Elliot reported that three
types of MRO can be exist [14]; short range order (3 – 5 Å), medium range order (5 - 8 Å),
and large order (8-10 Å). For short range order (SRO), there is very little difference between
the crystalline and a-semiconductors. Amorphous semiconductors can be classified into
several categories depending on their characteristic properties. The amorphous solid can be
divided into five major classes: (1) ionic, (2) covalent, (3) metallic, (4) Van der Waals, and (5)
hydrogen-bonding. The elements of interest here namely the chalcogenide; Selenium (Se),
Tellurium (Te) and Sulphur (S) fall under covalently bonded glasses.
Modelling of amorphous structure can be divided in two major classes; (a) Dense random
packing of hard sphere (DRP): quite successful in explaining some the amorphous structure
of some liquids and amorphous metals. (b) continues random network (CRN): suitable to
describe the structures with predominantly covalent bonded materials such as covalent glasses.
Consequently, an amorphous material does not have the periodicity of the crystalline
counterpart but is made up of a continuous random network of atoms as depicted in figure
1.1 (b). This does not mean that an amorphous structure is completely random. Covalent
glasses have a much higher degree of SRO [15] than metallic glasses [16, 17]. Most of the
structural models address only the formation of a network. Only few models address towards
bond angle distributions, bond rotations and bond length. Moreover, as a fundamental law for
structural model, it was stated that no model can be considered to be valid until that model
can explain all of the available data [18, 19].

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 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

1.2 Band Theory of Amorphous Semiconductors

Although a-semiconductor is a non-crystalline material, the band theory of amorphous
semiconductors is closely related to its crystalline counterpart. The theory was called the band
theory because when quantum mechanics was applied to a crystal, bands of allowed energy
states were brought into existence. Besides these bands of allowed states, which are often
grouped into two principle bands labeled as the valence and conduction bands, there is also a
band gap separating the two bands where no electron states can exist. The band theory was
first derived for the crystalline structure. This is because the long-range periodicity of the
atomic bonding arrangement made possible a number of important simplifications in the
application of quantum mechanics to solids. These bands describe the number of electron
states per unit energy per electron at energy, through a function called the density of states
(DOS). This is a significant theory for material science, because density of states diagram is
used to explain the electrical and optical properties of materials. When it was discovered that
amorphous and crystalline semiconductors shared the same basic electronic and optical
properties [20], it immediately led to the thinking that the DOS of the a-semiconductor might
be similar to that of its crystalline counterpart and not completely different as it was thought
initially. Anderson [21] was the first to quantitatively show that the effects of disorder on the
Schrodinger equation resulted in a localization of some of the states in the band. Basically, this
means that unlike a crystal an electron in an amorphous material is not free to move through
the whole lattice but is localized in space. Anderson further postulated that these localized
states are a result of the degree of disorder in the lattice and not any particular imperfection.
This can be seen in the three popular densities of states models proposed shown in figure 1.2.
One important difference between crystalline and a-semiconductors is the existence of
localized states in the mobility gap. Unlike the extended states found in the two principal
bands, electrons in the localized states are not free to travel anywhere in the material and thus
have zero mobility. While some of these localized states are created by defects, the majorities
of them are created by the loss of long range order and is unique to solids which are
amorphous. The density of states diagram for a crystalline semiconductor is illustrated in figure
1.2 (a). In a crystalline solid the long-range order of the atomic structure has two important
consequences; First, the conduction and valence bands have definite edges where the density
of states sharply decrease to zero, and second, all the states in the bands extend throughout
the solid.
Since amorphous materials lack the long-range order of their crystalline counterparts, it was
long believed that they could not be semiconductors. So, imagine the surprise of Goryunova
and Kolomiets in 1955, when they discovered that one of their amorphous compositions
demonstrated the typical semiconductor behavior of conductivity [1].

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 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

Figure 1.2: Parabolic Density of States (DOS) models for semiconductors.

(a) DOS of a crystalline semiconductor; showing the well-defined edges for the two extended state
bands separated by a bandgap
(b) DOS models proposed by Mott [22], showing the smearing out of the band edges caused by
local variations in the lattice parameters
(c) DOS models proposed by Cohen, Fritzsche and Ovshinski (CFO) [23], showing the
localized states extending across the forbidden gap and
(d) DOS models proposed by Marshall and Owen [24] containing deep donors below acceptors.
Note: the x-axis in all the above 4 figures are logarithmic and the hatched regions denote localized
states

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 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

Since that time, it has become clear that it is not the periodicity but the chemical bonding that
distinguishes the properties of a solid. Mott [22] was the first to note that the sharp band edges
of crystalline materials was due to the long-range order and that in amorphous materials these
sharp edges should disappear.
Mott stated that this was due to the changes in the Bloch wave functions at the conduction
and valence band edges, EC and EV respectively. This produces extended tails, which enter the
forbidden gap region. This is shown in the energy diagram of figure 1.2 (b). This model has
been proposed to apply to alloy glasses, which contain compositional as well as positional
disorder. Furthermore, if these tail from the conduction and valence bands overlap then they
lead to a model that somewhat resembles a metal. These tail states have a major effect on
carrier conduction within an a-semiconductor. Carriers in a crystalline structure travel in the
conduction or valence band through electronic energy states that extends throughout the
entire crystal. Mott argued that from certain energy on, the electronic states in an amorphous
material become extended, which lead to transition energies in the conduction and valence
bands that produce a jump in the mobility. These transition energies are called mobility edges
and are equivalent to band edges of crystalline materials. As well this change in the mobility
of charge carriers led to the idea of a mobility gap in amorphous materials, which is also similar
to the band gap of crystalline solids. Mott’s postulation of the mobility gap clearly explains
how it is possible for amorphous materials to behave as semiconductors.
The model put forth by Cohen, Fritzche and Ovshinsky, known as the CFO model [23], figure
1.2 (c), is basically an extension of Mott’s model. Cohen, Fritzche and Ovshinsky summarized
that Mott underestimated the amount of disorder in an amorphous solid. Four principles were
used to come to this conclusion: (I) the band tails of amorphous materials depend on the
degree of the divergence from perfect periodicity. (II) There are sharp mobility edges that
separate the extended states from the localized states in each band. (III) The localized band
tails extend across the gap region, which results in an overlap at the Fermi level, which seems
to suggest that there is metallic conduction but, one should realized that the widened tail states
are still highly localized in space, as in Mott’s model. (IV) Amorphous materials are not bound
by the strict constraints of long range order found in their crystalline counter parts. As a result
each atom can be expected to fulfill its proper valence requirements locally. This resembles
that any distinct structure in the density of localized states in the gap region does not exist.
This led to the DOS model proposed by Marshall and Owen [24] depicted in figure 1.2 (d).
They noted that defects such as dangling bonds, vacancies, interstitials, impurities, etc. are
present in all crystalline or amorphous solids. Such defects lead to additional localized states
within the mobility gap of the material. These defects lead to localized energy states in the
form of electron and hole traps within the gap region of the material, in addition to the
disorder induced tail states. It was previously assumed that the disorder induced states would
cover up these defect states, but Marshall and Owen proposed that there would be significant

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 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

mid gap states caused by these defects. They concluded that the hole traps are acceptor-like,
lying about 0.43 eV above the valence band [25, 26]. The position of the Fermi level is
determined by the donor-like and acceptor-like trap bands in the mobility gap. They also
surmised that the concentration of donor and acceptor traps self-adjust to ensure that the
Fermi level remains near the center of the mobility gap. This has significant consequences for
predicting the electronic properties of the material, because even small concentrations of these
mid gap states can make the doping of the semiconductor with donors or acceptors ineffectual.

1.3 Preparation Techniques of Amorphous Alloy

There are several techniques that can be used to prepare materials in an amorphous state. Since
the amorphous phase is less thermodynamically stable than the corresponding crystalline form
i.e. it possesses a greater free energy, the preparation of amorphous materials can be regarded
as the addition of excess free energy in some manner to the crystalline counterpart. Thus,
amorphous materials are prepared through non-equilibrium process. How this is done can
vary wide, but it is a rule of thumb that the faster the rate of cooling, the further the amorphous
solid lies from ‘equilibrium’ and the properties of prepared material depends on the methods
of preparation. The most common way of obtaining amorphous solids, including chalcogenide
glasses is rapid solidification, in which the pre-condensed state is cooled rapidly from a
temperature above its melting point to a temperature where the structural rearrangement in
the liquid falls out of equilibrium. Basically, amorphous solid can be obtained by three different
roots: Rapid quenching from Liquid Phase, rapid condensation from the vapor phase, or by
crystalline lattice transformation.
The used methods to produce a-solid from a liquid phase are: melt quenching, polymerization
reactions, precipitation and co-precipitation reactions, elimination of a solvent and electrolytic
deposition [11]. The most important and of course most widely used method to prepare
amorphous solids is the melt quenching method. By this method all types of solids; covalent,
ionic, metallic, Van der Waal and hydrogen can be quenched from melt to form amorphous
solid. For the preparation of chalcogenide glasses by melt quenching, the ampoules are made
of graphite, glassy carbon or high temperature oxides as e.g. silicon oxide (quartz) used. Low
network energy of chalcogenide materials requires relatively low melting temperatures, which
determine a considerable diminishing of the ampoule wall corrosion if compared to the case
of oxide glasses. The high vapour pressure of chalcogenide melts and the tendency, especially
at higher temperatures, to react with oxygen, requires the work in closed systems under
vacuum conditions. Therefore, corresponding mixture of chalcogenide elements sealed in
quartz ampoules under high vacuum conditions (~10-5 Torr). For the sake of homogeneity,
either the ampoules are rotated in the oven, or the oven itself is subjected to periodical change
of position or even to large periodical oscillations. The melt quenching is released by throwing
the ampoules in a cold liquid, usually water or Liquid N2.

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The used methods to produce a-solid from a vapour phase can be classified as non-reactive
and reactive. In both methods thin films can be prepared by deposition of vapour phase onto
suitable substrate. The common non-reactive deposition methods are Thermal deposition by
vacuum evaporation, Electron and laser ablation, Flash evaporation, Plasma-jet evaporation,
Cathode sputtering and ion implantation. In reactive deposition methods such as chemical
vapour deposition (CVD); very pure films can be obtained by deposition from vapours. The
decomposition reactions, which take place during heating of a particular chalcogenide
compound, are exploited in this method [11, 27].
Finally, crystalline lattice transformation which is less convenient way to obtain amorphous
solids offers alternative routes to glasses of the same composition but different entropy. The
methods used in such transformations are; mechanical processing; in which crystalline material
can be transformed into amorphous powder by long time grinding, irradiation; high energetic
neutron beams or ion beams can destroy the lattice periodicity, introduce defects and finally
transform the crystal surface or bulk into amorphous material, shock waves; mechanical
shocks by pressure waves of several megabars, accompanied by high temperatures, can induce
the formation of the amorphous state [28].

1.4 Applications of Chalcogenide Materials

Chalcogenide materials continue to show promising capabilities in a variety of applications
and are gaining a lot of interest in many fields of semiconductor applications. Chalcogenides
were originally developed for applications and testing in a-semiconductor devices as early as
the 1950’s [29-33], but following the discoveries of their more unique properties, they began
to be used in many optics applications from various wave guides [34] such as Bragg reflectors
[35], thin films used in solar cells, and infrared applications [36, 37]. Another note to mention
about chalcogenide glasses is that the presence of homopolar bonds plays a vital role in some
applications such as photoresists and electron beam resists. These types of resist allow for the
ability of submicron-level lithography processing [38, 30]. Due to their density of states and
energy band gap, chalcogenide materials are ideal for mid-infrared applications both in
absorbing and emitting in these wavelengths [29, 30, 37, 38]. Because chalcogenides are easily
pressed into various shapes, they are also found in applications for IR lenses for use in optics
and in micro electro-mechanical systems [29, 30, 34, 39-41]. In just the past few, years flash
memory applications have exploded, most widespread as the ‘digital film’ for digital camera
memory. Other applications include portable flash drives, hard drive components in space
equipment such as the recent missions to Mars, and media storage in every aspect of electronic
equipment: MP3 players, cell phones, BIOS chips, PDAs, etc. Chalcogenides show promising
results in this area because of their nonvolatile ability to maintain different logic states based
on their phase change properties and high-speed program rate of less than 100 ps [41, 42].
Research with chalcogenide materials, where applying the unique photo-induced anisotropy

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 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

effects to thin film layers of chalcogenide on microelectromechanical systems cantilevers,

creating an opto-mechanical reaction based on polarized light incident, is being investigated.
These devices allow for a completely optically actuated device [42]. Current searches in the
electronic journals reveal new and frequent research in unique applications of chalcogenide
materials.

1.5 Scope of this Monograph

Chalcogenide glasses are among the most widely known families of amorphous materials and
have been studied extensively over the past few decades because of their interesting
fundamental properties and wide commercial applications. They behave as semiconductors
and exhibit a-semiconductor behaviour with band gap energy ranging from 1 to 3 eV. Thin
film of chalcogenide glasses is known to be sensitive to the absorption of electromagnetic
radiation and show a variety of photon induced effects as a result of radiation. On exposure
to light or other radiations capable of exciting electron-hole pairs, chalcogenide glassy
materials can exhibit structural changes. These structural changes are predominantly due to
modifications in the atomic configuration, which consequently affect their physico-chemical
properties such as the optical constants, energy bands and electronic transport phenomena of
the semiconductor materials. Several photo-induced and laser-induced phenomena are
observed in amorphous chalcogenide thin films. These changes are accompanied with the
change in the optical constants, i.e., change in the optical band gap and optical absorption
coefficient. Laser irradiation and light illumination can affect structural changes. Laser
irradiation to chalcogenide glasses has been regarded as a process for spatially selected
structural modification and/or modification in the localized density of states in the mobility
gap of glassy materials. Laser induced changes in amorphous chalcogenide needs systematic
investigation with a view to better understanding the mechanism of the phenomena taking
place in them as well as their practical applications.
The new opto-electronic applications require new materials with specific properties. They
must exhibit luminescence, low phonon energy, high refractive index and also transparency in
the middle and far IR spectra. Se-Te based glasses show very good transparency in the IR
range. Difficulties during the preparation of Se-Te based glasses are caused by the presence of
tellurium because the tendency to crystallization becomes higher for higher content of Te,
Hence Te content should be less in preparing Se-Te based alloy to maintain less crystallinity.
The application requirements of these glasses in the case of high power laser irradiation
transport are their temperature stability. In this book I focused to the study laser irradiation effect on the
optical and thermal properties of Se-Te as well as laser irradiation effect on optical properties of Se-Te based
glassy alloy with metallic additives of Ga, Al and Hg.
Photoconductivity measurements play an important role in studying localized states, characteristic
of a-semiconductors and serves as a useful technique to determine the energy distribution of

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 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

various kinds of gap states, which influence the carrier mobilities and lifetimes in chalcogenide
glasses as attributed to multi trapping processes. These measurements are quite important to
decide about the use of a particular material for various photoconductive applications.
Moreover, the photosensitivity and photo generation of the charge carriers and their transport
in the medium can be determined by photoconductivity study. Transient photoconductivity
measurements in chalcogenide glasses are important as the photocurrent rise and decay with
time depends upon the presence of traps in the mobility gap of these materials. These traps
originate from the defect states present in these materials. Therefore, such measurements
made at different additive concentration and intensities give important information about the
defect states.
In the view of above, the entire work presented in the thesis has been divided into four
chapters. Layout of the thesis is as follows:
Chapter one deals with brief introduction of structure and theory behind band model of
chalcogenide glasses have been explained in this chapter. Different preparation techniques of
amorphous alloy and amorphous thin films also have been mentioned in chapter one. Finally,
this chapter ends by mentioning applications of chalcogenide materials and scope of the
present research work.
Chapter two presents study of laser irradiation effect on optical properties of Se-Te based
alloy with different metallic additives (Ga, Al and Hg). Involved experimental details for
preparation of glassy alloys under study and amorphous thin films of prepared amorphous
alloys have been explained in this chapter. This chapter includes used laser irradiation
technique and described effect of irradiation on different alloy with additive concentration.
Chapter three gives study of laser irradiation effect on basic thermal properties of glassy
Se96Te4 chalcogenide. Description of glassy nature and basic thermal properties of
chalcogenides followed by experimental technique used has been given in this chapter.
Observed laser irradiation effects on thermal properties Se96Te4 glassy alloy have been
explained.
Chapter four describes effect of metallic additives with different concentration on
photoconductivity of Se-Te based thin films. Description of photo-induced effect and
photoconductivity in chalcogenide glasses followed by experimental detail has been given in
this chapter. Effect of Al and Hg metallic additives on the steady state and transient
photoconductivity has been studied and explained.

1.6 References
[1] N. A. Goryunova, B. T. Kolomiets, Zhurn. Techn. Fiz; 25 (1955) 984.
[2] A. F. Ioffe, A. R. Regel, Progr. Semiconductors; 4 (1960) 237.
[3] S. Ovshinky, Phys. Rev. Lett., 21 (1968) 1450
[4] S. Ovshinky, J. Non-cryst. Solids, 2 (1970) 99
[5] P. G. Le Comber, W. E. Spear, Phys. Rev. Lett; 25 (1970) 509.

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 Chapter 1: Introduction to Amorphous Semiconductors

[6] T. D. Moustakas, D. A. Anderson, W. Paul, Sol. State Comm; 23 (1977) 155.

[7] S. R. Ovshinsky, Physical Properties of Amorphous Materials. http://ovonics.com
[8] Ed. D. Adler, B. B. Schwartz, M, C. Steele, Institute of Amorphous Studies Series, Plenum
Press, N.Y.; (1985) 105.
[9] S. Reynolds and RE Belford, Physics in Technology , 18 (1987) 193
[10] E. Davis, Nevill Mott: Reminiscences and Appreciations (CRC Press, 1998)
[11] J. Zarzycki, W. Scott. C. Massart, Glasses and the Vitreous state. (Cambridge University
Press, 1990)
[12] G. Lucovsky and F Galeener, J. Non-Cryst. Solids 37 (1980) 53
[13] S. Elliot, Adv. Physics, 38 (1989) 1
[14] P. Gaskell, J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys., 12 (1979) 4337
[15] V.G. Zhdanov, B.T. Kolomiets, V.M. Lyubin and V.K. Malinovbskii, b“Photoinduced
Optical Anisotropy in Chalcogenide Vitreous Semiconducting Films,” Physica Status Solidi
A, Vol. 52 (1979) 621 – 626,
[16] M. Thorp, D. Jacbos and B. Djordjrvic, in “Insulating and semiconducting glasses”, edited
by P. Boolchand (World Scientific, 2000) p. 95-146
[17] R.A. Street and N.F Mott, “States in the Gap in Glassy Semiconductors,” Physical Review
Letters, Vol. 35, no. 19 (1975) pp 1293 – 1295.
[18] R. Weeks, J. Non-crys. Solids, 73 (1985) 103
[19] Madan A. and Shaw M.P., “The Physics and Applications of Amorphous Semiconductors”,
Academic Press Inc., San Diego; (1988) 4-10, 471-476.
[20] S. K. Bahl and K. L. Chopra; “Electrical and Optical Properties of Amorphous vs Crystalline
GeTe Films” Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology 6, 561 (1969)
[21] P.W. Anderson, “Absence of Diffusion in Certain Random Lattices,”Physical Review, Vol.
109, (1958) 1492 – 1505
[22] Mott N.F., “Electrons in disordered structures”, Advances in Physics; 16 (1967) 49-57.
[23] Cohen M.H., Fritzsche H. and Ovshinski S.R., “Simple band model for amorphous
semiconductor alloys”, Physical Review Letters; 22, (1969) 1065-1072.
[24] Marshall J.M. and Owen A.E., ”Drift mobility studies in vitreous arsenic triselenide”,
Philosophical Magazin;, 24, (1971) 1281-1290.
[25] N.A. Goryunova and B.T. Kolomiets, Journal of Technical Physics (USSR); 25 (1955) 984.
[26] J. Tauc, “Amorphous and Liquid Semiconductors,” Plenum Press, Copyright (1974).
[27] R. Zalin, The Physics of amorphous solids (Wiley-VCH, 1998)
[28] G. Greaves and S. Sen, Advances in Physics, 56 (2007)1.
[29] Kolobov, A.V., and Kazunobu Tanaka., Photoinduced Phenomena in Amorphous
Chalcogenides: From Phenomenology to Nanoscale, in Handbook of Advanced Electronic
and Photonic Materials and Devices Vol 5.
[30] H.S. Nalwa, Chalcogenide Glasses and Sol-Gel Materials; Academic Press: San Diego;
(2001) 47-85.
[31] Blake, T.F., “Investigation of Ge2Te2Sb5 Chalcogenide Films for Use As An Analog
Memory” in Air Force Isnstitute of Technology; Ohio, Dayton. (2000).
[32] Ovshinsky, S.R., “An Introduction to Ovonic Research” Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids;
2 (1970) 99-106.
[33] Rawson, H., Inorganic Glass-Forming Systems, London: Academic Press; (1967).

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[34] Lopez et al, “Processing and Characterization of Bulk Chalcogenide Glasses Used for
Waveguide Applications” Journal of the American Ceramic Society; 85 (2002) 1372-1376.
[35] Saliminia, A., et al. “Efficient Bragg gratings in single mode planar waveguide of
chalcogenide glasses. in Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics”Europe; (1963).
[36] Green, M.A., “Crystalline and Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells: State of the Art and Future
Potential” Solar Energy; 74(3) (2003) 181.
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Substrates” Physica E: Low-Dimensional Systems and Nanostructures; 20 (2004) 536-539.
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Chapter 2

Laser Irradiation Effect & Photoconductivity in Amorphous Semiconductor

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