Derelaxation of Amorphous Silicon by Ion Implantation: Optical Characterization

ABSTRACTThe transition between relaxed and unrelaxed amorphous silicon can be obtained by thermal treatment of the unrelaxed amorphous or by low dose ion irradiation of the relaxed material. In both cases a variation in the short range order has been invoked to explain the behavior of the structural changes probed by various techniques. In this work we study the influence of such changes on the optical properties of a-Si in the region of the transition between the relaxed and the unrelaxed states. We show that a progressive variation of the optical constant in the visible-near infrared region upon derelaxation occurs. Therefore, significant modifications of the electron density of state in the region above the optical gap are associated with the changes in the short range order probed by Raman spectroscopy.