Amorphous silicon
non-crystalline silicon
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is the non-crystalline form of silicon used to create solar cells in solar panels and thin-film transistors in LCDs.
Used as semiconductor material for a-Si solar cells, or thin-film silicon solar cells, it is deposited in thin films onto a variety of flexible substrates, such as glass, metal and plastic. Amorphous silicon cells generally feature low efficiency.
Amorphous silicon is a second-generation thin-film solar cell technology. Although its share of the worldwide photovoltaic market declined relative to crystalline silicon and alternative cells such as CdTe and CIGS. Amorphous silicon is still a used material for manufacturers for the thin film transistor (TFT) elements of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and for x-ray imagers.
Amorphous silicon differs from other allotropic variations, such as monocrystalline silicon—a single crystal, and polycrystalline silicon, that consists of small grains, also known as crystallites.
Description
Silicon is a fourfold coordinated atom that is normally tetrahedrally bonded to four neighboring silicon atoms. In crystalline silicon (c-Si) this tetrahedral structure continues over a large range, thus forming a well-ordered crystal lattice.
In amorphous silicon this long range order is not present. Rather, the atoms form a continuous random network.
The public source identifies “Amorphous silicon” as non-crystalline silicon. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Amorphous, silicon and non-crystalline.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amorphous silicon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.