Luminescent amorphous silicon layers

摘要

The electronic structure of amorphous silicon layers has been calculated within the empirical tight binding approximation using the Wooten-Winer-Weaire atomic structure model. We predict an important blue shift due to the confinement for layer thickness below 2 nm and we compare with cyrstalline silicon layers. The radiative recombination rate is enhanced by the disorder and the confinement but remains quite small. The comparison of our results with experimental results shows that the density of defects and localized states in the studied samples must be quite small.