ABSTRACT
Pure silicon thin fi lms can be deposited by vacuum deposition techniques, like evaporation, sputtering, etc. They are either amorphous, i.e. they consist of a disordered atomic structure, or they can be microcrystalline, i.e. they contain small crystallites with diameters around 1 μm or less. In general, such thin layers of silicon contain a very high density of dangling bond defects (around 1019 defects per cm3) and cannot be used to build semiconductor devices.
