Optical study of microvoids, voids, and local inhomogeneities in amorphous silicon

Elastic light scattering has been used for a study of microstructure in amorphous hydrogenated silicon. A simple theory to get quantitative informations on the microstructure has been presented for the first time, both for Rayleigh and Mie scattering. For optimal very high frequency glow discharge amorphous silicon layers, the presence of voids with diameter between 1 and 20 nm is typical.