A new process enables thin films of semiconductors to be deposited onto flexible substrates at relatively low temperatures, which may have applications for building solar cells and displays.
“We have developed a new, plasma-free approach to creating large-area, thin-film semiconductors,” says John Badding, a professor of chemistry, physics, and materials science and engineering at Pennsylvania State Univ. “By putting the process under elevated pressure, our new technique could make it less expensive and easier to create the flexible semiconductors that are used in flat-panel monitors and solar cells.”
Badding and his team were inspired by work that used high pressures and chemical vapor deposition to create films of semiconductors inside long, ultra-thin optical fibers.
“We said to ourselves, this process is so good at filling these optical fibers with semiconductors, what else can we do with it?,” Badding says.
The answer turned out to be a new way to make thin films of hydrogenated amorphous silicon using chemical vapor deposition. Hydrogenated amorphous silicon is probably the second most commercially...
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