Amorphous semiconductors equivalent to crystalline semiconductors produced by a glow discharge process

摘要

A method of making an amorphous semiconductor film or the like having desirable photoconductive and/or other properties comprises depositing on a substrate a solid amorphous semiconductor film including at least one element, by glow discharge decomposition of a compound containing said at least one element and at least one alterant element in an atmosphere separately containing at least one different alterant element, wherein the plurality of different alterant elements comprise at least fluorine and are incorporated in said amorphous semiconductor film during the deposition thereof yielding an altered amorphous semiconductor material having reduced density of localized states in the energy gap thereof so that greatly increased diffusion lengths for solar cell application are obtained and modifiers or dopants can be effectively added to produce p- type or n-type amorphous semiconductor films so that the films function like similar crystalline semiconductors.