Customer Reviews

Amorphous Silicon

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Why is amorphous silicon important? This book explains its significance in a variety of contexts. To the researcher interested in pure science, its properties are sufficiently different from crystalline or polycrystalline silicon to offer nontrivial studies.

But the greatest potential for amorphous silicon is in vast pervasive applications. Firstly, silicon is very common in the earth's crust, so applications that can make use of it can benefit from this. But, as the book makes clear, it is the expense of making pure crystalline silicon that has driven a lot of the research into amorphous silicon. Crystalline silicon is the base material in most semiconductor fabs. (The only major exception are the fabs that use GaAs. But those are for niche applications.) Amorphous silicon can be made by inherently cheaper means, like sputtering, and under far less stringent particulate contamination limits.

This motivates the book's discussion on the use of amorphous silicon in various contexts, like for solar cells. If the efficiency could be pushed sufficiently high, without a concomitant increase in the cost of manufacturing, then this could be a huge commercial field.

Interesting and challenging readings.