ABSTRACT
The control of the electronic properties of crystalline semiconductors achieved by doping with substitutional impurities was a most significant factor in the development of semiconductor physics and solid state electronics. Several workers in the field have expressed the opinion that amorphous semiconductors may well be insensitive to doping. It is argued that if, for instance, a pentavalent atom is introduced during the deposition of the amorphous germanium (a-Ge) or Silicon (Si) specimen it will be accommodated into the random network structure in such a way that the additional bond is satisfied. The fact that the electrical properties of the amorphous n-type or p-type films can be varied over a wide range in a systematic and reproducible manner could lead to more extensive applications of test materials. A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the possibility of producing p-type a-Si by adding small amounts of diborane to the silane.
