Optical Properties and Electronic Structure of Amorphous Germanium

Abstract The optical constants of amorphous Ge are determined for the photon energies from 0.08 to 1.6 eV. From 0.08 to 0.5 eV, the absorption is due to k ‐conserving transitions of holes between the valence bands as in p‐type crystals; the spin‐orbit splitting is found to be 0.20 and 0.21 eV in non‐annealed, and annealed samples respectively. The effective masses of the holes in the three bands are 0.49 m (respectively 0.43 m ); 0.04 m , and 0.08 m . An absorption band is observed below the main absorption edge (at 300 °K the maximum of this band is at 0.86 eV); the absorption in this band increases with increasing temperature. This band is considered to be due to excitons bound to neutral acceptors, and these are presumably the same ones that play a decisive role in the transport properties and which are considered to be associated with vacancies. The absorption edge has the form: ω 2 ϵ 2 ∼(hω− E g ) 2 ( E g = 0.88 eV at 300 °K). This suggests that the optical transitions conserve energy but not k vector, and that the densities of states near the band extrema have the same energy‐dependence as in crystalline Ge. A simple theory describing this situation is proposed, and comparison of it with the experimental results leads to an estimate of the localization of the conduction‐band wavefunctions.