IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 4, NO.

6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1998

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Amorphous Silicon-Based Guided-Wave Passive and Active Devices for Silicon Integrated Optoelectronics
Giuseppe Cocorullo, Member, IEEE, Francesco G. Della Corte, Member, IEEE, R. De Rosa, Ivo Rendina, A. Rubino, and E. Terzini

Abstract Waveguides and interferometric light amplitude modulators for application at the 1.3- and 1.55-m ber communication wavelengths have been fabricated with thin-lm hydrogenated amorphous silicon and its related alloys. The technique adopted for the thin-lm growth is the plasmaenhanced chemical vapor deposition, which has been shown to give the lowest defect concentration in the lm. Consequently the proposed waveguiding structures take advantage of the low optical absorption shown by a-Si:H at photon energies below the energy gap. In addition a good radiation connement can be obtained thanks to the bandgap tailoring opportunity offered by this simple and inexpensive technology. In particular rib waveguides, based on a a-SiC:H/a-Si:H stack, have been realized on crystal silicon, showing propagation losses as low as 0.7 dB/cm. The same structure has been utilized for the fabrication of thermooptic Fabry-Perot modulators with switching times of 10 s. Modulators based on the alternative waveguiding conguration ZnO/a-Si:H, giving comparable results, are also presented. Index Terms Amorphous silicon, integrated optics, modulators, silicon optoelectronics, thermooptic effect, waveguides.

I. INTRODUCTION RYSTALLINE SILICON (c-Si) promises to acquire an important role in future low-cost optoelectronic technology [1]. The potential advantages offered by this material are well known. Besides the aspect of the continuous technological developments carried by VLSI manufacturers, some interesting optical characteristics of Si are in fact clearly outstanding. In particular the low absorption at photon energies below bandgap, the plasma dispersion effect, the thermooptic effect, and the capability to electroluminesce when hosting Er ions, have all been exploited to fabricate passive (waveguides) and active (photodetectors, modulators and LEDs) optoelectronic devices for IR ber-optic communication purposes. In contrast,
Manuscript received May 5, 1998; revised August 8, 1998. This work was supported by Regione Campania, Assessorato alla Ricerca Scientica under Grant L.R. 41/94 and by the C.N.R. under Grant P.F. MADESS II (Sensors and Microsystems Sub-Project). G. Cocorullo is with the Istituto di Ricerca per lElettromagnetismo ed i Componenti ElettroniciCNR, I-80124 Naples, Italy. He is also with DEIS, Universit` a della Calabria, I-87036 Rende, Cosenza, Italy. F. G. Dalla Corte and I. Rendina are with the Istituto di Ricerca per lElettromagnetismo ed i Componenti ElettroniciCNR, I-80124 Naples, Italy. R. De Rosa, A. Rubino, and E. Terzini are with ENEACentro Ricerche, I-80055 Portici, Naples, Italy. Publisher Item Identier S 1077-260X(98)08615-8.

very little has been done to assess the potentiality of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) in this eld. Since the discovery of the possibility of inducing the modication of the Fermi level by doping [2], this semiconductor has been considered almost exclusively for low-cost wide-area photovoltaic applications. This has induced a huge number of scientists to concentrate merely on the study of the optoelectronic properties of a-Si in the visible portion of the spectrum, where it exhibits a good quantum efciency. Comparatively very little has been done to assess its behavior outside this range, and in particular at the IR wavelengths of interest in the beroptic communication area. Recently, however, a new interest for a-Si as an optoelectronic material has to be recognized. For instance, light emitting diodes [3], [4], photodetectors [5], [6], and optocouplers [7] have been fabricated making use of technologies compatible with the standard microelectronic processes, thus offering new opportunities for the integration of optoelectronic tasks on a silicon chip. In this paper, we present recent results concerning the realization and characterization of some a-Si:H based, guided wave, optoelectronic devices designed for use at the ber optic communication wavelengths of 1.3 and 1.55 m. II. AMORPHOUS SILICON FOR OPTOELECTRONICS: TECHNOLOGY AND CHARACTERISTICS Thin lms of a-Si can be deposited either by physical deposition techniques, like sputtering or evaporation, or by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques. In both cases the process takes place at low temperatures, usually below 300 C, and therefore layers of this material can be virtually deposited on any substrate. However, the electronic and optical properties of the deposited lms are deeply inuenced by the kind of technology adopted, and on the particular process parameters. Sputtered a-Si, for instance, is characterized by a high density of states in the forbidden band, and therefore the introduction of doping atoms is usually ineffective in moving the Fermi level toward the valence or conduction band. Its photon absorption tail extends well beyond the energy gap, so that optical absorption coefcients in excess of 1000 cm are typical at 1.3 eV [8]. As a consequence this semiconductor has been never considered for waveguiding purposes. Remarkably, lower absorption coefcients, especially at the infrared wavelengths in the range of 1.3 and 1.55 m, are

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Fig. 1. Modication of the optical energy gap of the a-SiC:H alloy as a function of the CH4 owed into the reactor during the plasma deposition. Eg04 is dened as the energy corresponding to an optical absorption of 104 cm01 .

Fig. 2. Absorption spectra of the undoped a-Si:H and a-SiC:H lms deposited in our plasma reactor. Undoped crystal silicon absorption spectrum is shown for comparison.

generally shown by silicon thin lms deposited by plasmaenhanced CVD (PECVD). In this case, the chemical reaction that forms the silicon layer is sustained by a plasma discharge assisted decomposition of the main process gas molecules, usually SiH . This technique allows the incorporation of hydrogen atoms in the lm, which saturate the silicon dangling bonds and clean the semiconductor forbidden band from a conspicuous amount of undesired states. The resulting a-Si:H alloy can easily show energy gaps spanning from 1.6 to 1.9 eV, depending on the H atom concentration, and therefore on the degree of saturation of the silicon bonds [9]. The effectiveness of the hydrogen atoms in saturating the dangling bonds in aSi:H depends on the deposition temperature, as we showed in [10]. Another interesting opportunity offered by PECVD is that by mixing the main process gas, i.e., SiH , with other components like CH , CO or NO during the plasma reaction, it is possible to obtain semiconductor alloys with wider energy gaps, while the opposite change is achieved by adding GeH . This makes bandgap tailoring at hand with this simple , dened technology. In Fig. 1 the value of the energy gap as the photon energy corresponding to an absorption coefcient of 10 cm , has been measured for a-SiC:H as a function of the CH gas percentage in the CH -SiH deposition gas mixture. The other deposition process parameters are the same from 1.87 eV for we reported in [10]. Variation of pure a-Si:H to about 2.3 eV for 80% of CH are obtained, corresponding to refractive index values spanning from about 3.4 to 2.9. The absorption spectra of pure a-Si:H and of a-SiC:H, deposited in our PECVD system, are plotted in Fig. 2. The latter lm has been obtained for 70% of CH in the CH SiH deposition gas. The measurements have been carried out by optical transmittance-reectance experiments at higher energies and by photothermal deection spectroscopy [11] in the lower energy range. At the photon energy of 0.95 eV, corresponding to the wavelength of 1.3 m, the absorption coefcient of a-Si:H is about 0.1 cm , a value for which a semiconductor can be considered transparent and useful for integrated optics applications [1]. This sets a lower limit of approximately 0.4 dB/cm at 1.3 m for a waveguide realized with this material, if no other loss mechanisms are acting. The

Fig. 3. Schematic of the fabricated a-Si:H/a-SiC:H rib waveguide.

absorption becomes even lower at higher wavelengths (i.e., m). At these wavelengths a-SiC:H is characterized by higher values of , but never exceeding 1 cm . In the same gure the absorption spectrum of intrinsic crystalline silicon (c-Si) is reported for comparison. III. WAVEGUIDES
AT

1.3

AND

1.55

The previously discussed characteristics of PECVD hydrogenated amorphous silicon-based alloys have been exploited for the realization of low-loss channel waveguides at and m. The waveguides consist of an a-Si:H/aSiC:H heterostructure deposited on a c-Si wafer. The low deposition temperature of the amorphous lms ensures the full compatibility with the standard microelectronic processes. A schematic of the realized rib waveguides is shown in Fig. 3. The a-SiC:H undercladding layer has a thickness of 0.4 m, while the a-Si:H core is 3 m thick. The overcladding is air. The fabrication involved the following steps. First, the heavily Sb native oxide layer was removed from a doped silicon wafer by a short dip in oxide-etch solution. The wafer was then loaded into the deposition system, where a nal vacuum of 10 torr was reached before the plasma process could start. The a-SiC:H undercladding was formed by the RF assisted decomposition of SiH and CH , which were introduced into the chamber at ow rates of 20 sccm (standard cubic centimeters per minute) and 47 sccm respectively. During this process the substrate temperature was held at 180 C. To form the a-Si:H core layer, only 42 sccm of SiH were owed, while the substrate temperature was risen to 220 C. The process pressure was 700 mtorr in both cases, while the 13.56-MHz RF power was 17 mW/cm and 23 mW/cm respectively. More details about the deposition technique can be found in [10]. After photolithographic patterning of the planar amorphous stack, the rib waveguides were dened by plasma etching,

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TABLE I MEASURED PROPAGATION LOSSES IN a-Si:H/a-SiC:H RIB WAVEGUIDES

Although we believe that this effect has only a minor inuence on our structures, it could be circumvented by slightly increasing the thickness of the low refractive index a-SiC:H undercladding.

using photoresist as an etch mask. The process gas mixture was 8% O in CF , owed at 30 sccm at a pressure of 0.3 mtorr, and the RF power density was 98 W/cm . During the etch, the substrate was held at room temperature. The nal rib height was 1.2 m. A set of waveguides with widths of 15, 12, 10, 8, and 6 m have been examined to evaluate their respective propagation losses. Due to the comparable etching rates of a-Si:H and photoresist, and to some kind of under-etching, which is presently under study, the rib denition process revealed unreliable, and structures narrower than 6 m showed, therefore, frequent interruptions. For this reason, they have not been taken into account. As a consequence, all the waveguides under test are multimode. However, in accordance with the consideration reported in [12], numerical simulations show that the fabrication of single-mode waveguides with our present technology is possible, but requires in general smaller rib heights, to be calculated separately for each waveguide width. Waveguides of various lengths were obtained by cleavage of the crystalline substrate. The radiation of a 1-mW 1.3- m laser diode, pigtailed to a 5- m-core monomode ber, was butt coupled to each waveguide for testing. The transmitted light was detected at the output by means of an InGaAs photodiode. The same measurements were also carried out at a wavelength of 1.55 m. The propagation losses have been estimated with the cutback technique, from a set of four points at least for each single m are reported in structure. The measured losses at Table I. The technique is affected by errors coming from the uctuation of the output signal, which in turn depends on the degree of success in the ber-to-waveguide coupling procedure at each point. This uctuation was limited to less then 20% in all of our measurements. This value was used to estimate the errors reported in the same table. The largest waveguides (15 m) show the best performance (0.7 dB/cm). Losses increase rapidly for narrower ribs, reaching an average of 10 dB/cm for the 6- m-wide waveguides. Measurements made at m gave the same results within the experimental error. For all of our geometries, numerical simulations based on the effective index method predict losses between 0.4 and 1 dB/cm for the rst guided modes. These values, which are in agreement with the theoretical attenuation due to the intrinsic absorption of the core material, well t the experimental values measured in 15- m-wide waveguides. The divergence between experimental and theoretical data for narrower ribs nds explanation mainly in the unevenness of the waveguides, which clearly affects more the narrower devices. Another loss mechanism concerns the coupling of a radiation fraction into the heavily doped substrate. This tail increases for smaller cross-section area waveguides, and, therefore, for narrower ribs [13] where it determines higher losses.

IV. a-Si:H-BASED MODULATOR STRUCTURES AND FABRICATION Light switching systems are required for the construction of optical communication links in local area networks (LANs) and also in photonic intermodule connections. In those applications where high bit rates are not required, such as in ber-to-the-home networks and automotive products, the use of robust and low-cost optical components, compatible with the present microelectronic technology, is greatly preferred to that of the high-performance high-cost IIIV optoelectronic devices. For this reason, in the last few years, an increasing interest has been devoted to the fabrication of all-silicon light switches or modulators. Among the various techniques explored to realize active devices, those based on interference principles have been shown to be more effective [14]. In particular, the thermooptic effect (TOE) has been exploited to fabricate c-Si based light modulators. The rst prototype was developed by Treyz in 1991 [15]. The device, a MachZehnder guided-wave modulator realized in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, exhibited a bandwidth of a few tens of kilohertz when heated by means of an electrical power dissipating in a resistive layer covering one of the two arms of the interferometric structure. An analogous modulator, but exploiting a guided-wave lm on Si, was proposed in 1992 and showed structure in Ge Si bandwidths up to about 90 kHz [16]. An optimization, mainly of the waveguiding characteristics, of the Treyzs device was then proposed by Fisher et al. [17]. They in particular reported switching times of about 5 s in a large cross-section SOI rib guided-wave single-mode structure. Recently, we have reported the encouraging results of a micromachined all-crystal-silicon FabryPerot thermooptic modulators that extend the capability of thermally controlled switches at bandwidths beyond 1 MHz [18]. Unfortunately these devices, based on a silicon-on-silicon waveguiding structure, showed high insertion losses, due to the poor connement of the radiation obtained by doping the cladding layers. In order to overcome this problem, the superior optical characteristics of the bandgap engineered a-Si:H based waveguiding structures have been exploited for the fabrication of two optical modulators. The device operation is still based on the TOE. Our hydrogenated amorphous silicon has been previously characterized for this effect, and a thermooptic K at m has coefcient been measured [10]. This value is comparable to that reported for c-Si, and is much higher than for other thermooptic materials, like LiNbO (5.3 10 K ) or soda-lime glasses K ). (1 1.5 10 The modulators consist again of FabryPerot interferometers. They are based on the rib-like structures sketched in Fig. 4(a) and (b). Modulation is achieved by a phase shift in the cavity induced by TOE. The structure heating is obtained

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(a)

Fig. 5. SEM micrograph of a portion of a chip containing an array of modulators. The square regions are the aluminum bond pads necessary to contact the heating tungsten lm on top of the waveguide.

(b) Fig. 4. Schematic cross section of the two realized a-Si:H-based guided wave interferometric FabryPerot modulators.

by applying a current pulse to the resistive tungsten lm laying on top of the rib. The light is guided through the 3- mthick a-Si:H layer. In the modulator type A, a 400-nm-thick lower refractive index a-SiC:H buffer layer effectively screens the radiation from the highly light absorbing, n-doped, c-Si substrate. The deposition of the a-SiC:H cladding and the a-Si:H follows the process reported in [10]. For the device characterization we refer to [19]. Instead of a-SiC:H, the modulator type B uses a ZnO lm, deposited by sputtering, as undercladding. Details about this technology can be found in [20]. This semiconductor oxide shows a refractive index close to 2.0, which has allowed to reduce the thickness of the undercladding down to 100 nm without signicantly affecting the waveguiding characteristics of the modulator. This structure also presents a 100-nm-thick ZnO cladding lm deposited on top of the guiding a-Si:H layer. A 100-nm-thick tungsten layer was then deposited by -beam evaporation over both the stacked structures. This lm was patterned by photolithography to dene the resistive heater. In particular, a selective etch based on KH PO /KOH/K Fe(CN) (0.25/0.24/0.1 M) was used for tungsten. The rib of device A was dened by a partial etch of the a-Si:H layer. This was accomplished in a plasma etching reactor with the same technique described for waveguides in the previous section. To obtain the rib of structure B, the etch of the ZnO top layer was performed in water diluted HCl. The last step was the evaporation and denition of the 1- m-thick Al bond pads. The SEM picture of a 30- and a 40- m-wide modulators of the type B is shown in Fig. 5. In this case the tungsten lm between the pads has a resistance of 600 . The FabryPerot interferometric modulators were obtained by substrate cleaving. In order to perform the modulation

Fig. 6. Modication of the modulation depth in 30-m-wide 2-mm-long modulators of type A (a-Si:H/a-SiC:H) and B (ZnO/a-Si:H) as a function of the energy delivered by the current pulses applied to the resistive tungsten lm.

tests, the dies were bonded onto TO39 metal cases, and the integrated devices were used as reected light intensity modulators. m radiation of a DFB ber pigtailed laser The diode was butt-coupled to the rst input arm of a 3 dB Y branched, single-mode ber coupler. The single output of the ber coupler was applied to the modulator, while the second input arm was used to monitor the intensity of the reected radiation. The DFB laser module included an optical isolator to avoid stray coupling with the external Fabry-Perot cavity. (1) versus the driving The optical modulation depth electrical pulse energy is reported in Fig. 6 for two 30m-wide 2-mm-long devices of type A and B. This plot demonstrates that device type B in general requires a higher energy to show the same modulation depth of device A. In fact, due to the 1.2- m-thick rib, the active volume of device A is smaller, and therefore requires less heat to reach a given temperature. The maximum modulation depth of about 60%, corresponding to a cavity phase shift, has been observed for gate energies of 500 nJ. The ideal predicted by theory for these structures, by assuming a 0.3 reectivity at the etalon mirrors (viz., that one of an ideal Si-air interface), is about 70%. The agreement between experimental
1 The modulation depth M is dened as (I max Imin )=Imax , where Imax and Imin are the maximum respectively the minimum reected light intensity.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to thank Dr. A. Antonaia for the ZnO lm deposition. REFERENCES
[1] R. A. Soref, Silicon-based optoelectronics, Proc. IEEE, vol. 81, pp. 16871706, Dec. 1993. [2] W. E. Spear, Doped amorphous semiconductors, Advances in Phys., vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 811845, 1977. [3] O. B. Gusev, A. N. Kuznetsov, E. I. Terukov, M. S. Bresler, V. K. Kudoyarova, I. N. Yassievich, B. P. Zakharchenya, and W. Fuhs, Room-temperature electroluminescence of erbium-doped amorphous hydrogenated silicon, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 70, no. 2, pp. 240242, 1997. [4] S. Lombardo, S. U. Campisano, G. N. van den Hoven, A. Cacciato, and A. Polman, Room-temperature luminescence from Er-implanted semiinsulating polycrystalline silicon, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 63, no. 14, pp. 19421944, 1993. [5] J. Ho, Y. K. Fang, K. Wu, and C. S. Tsai, High-gain p-i-n infrared photosensors with Bragg reectors on amorphous silicon-germanium alloy, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 70, no. 7, pp. 826828, 1997. [6] M. Okamura and S. Suzuki, Infrared photodetection using a-Si:H photodiode, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 412414, Mar. 1994. [7] D. Kruangam, T. Sujaridchai, K. Chirakavikul, B. Ratwises, and S. Panyakeow, Novel amorphous silicon alloy optoelectronic integrated circuits, presented at the 17th Int. Conf. Amorphous and Microcrystalline Semiconductors, Budapest, Hungary, 1997, paper Fr-A2/1. [8] G. K. Celler, Modication of silicon properties with lasers, electron beams, and incoherent light, Crit. Rev. Solid State Mater. Sci., vol. 12, no. 3, 1984. [9] R. A. Street, Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991. [10] G. Cocorullo, F. G. Della Corte, I. Rendina, C. Minarini, A. Rubino, and E. Terzini, Amorphous silicon waveguides and light modulators for integrated photonics realized by low-temperature plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor deposition, Opt. Lett., vol. 21, no. 24, pp. 20022004, 1996. [11] W. B. Jackson and N. M. Amer, Direct measurement of gap-state absorption in hydrogenated amorphous silicon by photothermal deection spectroscopy, Phys. Rev. B, vol. 25, no. 8, pp. 55595561, 1982. [12] G. Cocorullo, F. G. Della Corte, R. De. Rosa, I. Rendina, A. Rubino, and E. Terzini, a-Si:H/a-SiC:H waveguides and modulators for lowcost silicon integrated optoelectronics, presented at the 17th Int. Conf. Amorphous and Microcrystalline Semiconductors, Budapest, Hungary, 1997, paper Tu-P1/11. [13] A. Splett and K. Petermann, Low-loss single-mode optical waveguides with large cross-section in standard epitaxial silicon, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 425427, 1994. [14] G. Cocorullo, F. G. Della Corte, I. Rendina, and A. Cutolo, New possibilities for efcient silicon integrated electro-optical modulators, Opt. Commun., vol. 86, no. 2, pp. 228235, 1991. [15] G. V. Treyz, Silicon Mach-Zehender waveguide interferometers operating at 1.3 m, Electron. Lett., vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 118120, 1991. [16] R. A. Mayer, K. H. Jung, W. D. Lee, D.-L. Kwong, and J. C. Campbell, Thin-lm thermo-optic Gex Si10x MachZehnder interferometer, Opt. Lett., vol. 17, no. 24, pp. 18121814, 1992. [17] U. Fisher, T. Zinke, B. Sch uppert, and K. Petermann, Singlemode optical switches based on SOI waveguides with large cross-section, Electron. Lett., vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 406408, 1994. [18] G. Cocorullo, M. Iodice, I. Rendina, and P. M. Sarro, All-silicon thermo-optic micro-modulator, in Proc. 25th Eur. Solid State Device Res. Conf., H. C. de Graaff and H. van Kranenburg, Eds., The Hague, The Netherlands, 1995, pp. 651654. [19] G. Cocorullo, F. G. Della Corte, R. De. Rosa, I. Rendina, A. Rubino, and E. Terzini, Amorphous silicon based waveguides and light modulators for silicon low-cost photonic integrated circuits, in Proc. MRS Fall Meet., Boston, MA, 1997, vol. 486, pp. 113117, paper no. H 10.3. [20] E. Terzini, A. Rubino, R. De. Rosa, and M. L. Addonizio, The effect of sputtering parameters on the performances of back-reector enhanced amorphous silicon solar cells, in Proc. MRS, San Francisco, CA, 1995, vol. 377. [21] G. Cocorullo, F. G. Della Corte, M. Iodice, I. Rendina, and P. M. Sarro, A temperature all-silicon micro-sensor based on the thermooptic effect, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 44, pp. 681868, May 1997.

Fig. 7. ZnO/a-Si:H device response to a 500-ns-long 300-nJ-energy current pulse. The switchoff time is about 10 s.

and theoretical values indicates the good optical quality of the FabryPerot end-facets obtained by substrate cleaving. It should be pointed out that the modulation depth may be degraded in a multimode cavity by the superposition of as many Airys functions as the number of the propagating modes [21]. All of these modes will be characterized by slightly different effective refractive indexes, and will therefore result out of phase each other. Although this effect could even lead to a severe distortion of the modulation pattern, with reduction of the modulation depth, there was no dramatic evidence of it during the measurements. This problem, however, can be fully overcome by the adoption of single-mode structures. The device response to a 500-ns-long 300-nJ-energy electrical driving pulse is reported in Fig. 7. A switchoff time of about 10 s is measured. This value is two order of magnitude shorter than that obtainable in silica thermally controlled switches, and comparable to that reported in much more expensive epitaxial SOI and SiGeSi based structures. Moreover, it is worthwhile pointing out that the device speed can be easily improved by reducing its transverse dimensions. In fact, the large cross section area of the waveguide (30 3 m ) is still far from the cut-off limit. V. CONCLUSION The simple and inexpensive technology of amorphous silicon and related alloys has been utilized to fabricate guided wave passive and active devices for the IR communication wavelengths of 1.3 and 1.55 m. In particular, we presented a set of waveguides showing propagation losses as low as 0.7 dB/cm, and two interferometric thermooptical modulators realized with similar technologies. Thanks to their small volume, the modulators have shown fast thermal transients, and maximum switching times of the order of 10 s have been measured. The low temperature ( 200 C) required for the deposition of the amorphous lms makes this technology suitable for the integration of optoelectronic functions on VLSI chips realized with standard microelectronic techniques.

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Giuseppe Cocorullo (M93), for a biography, see this issue, p. 988.

Francesco G. Della Corte (M98), for a biography, see this issue, p. 988.

A. Rubino received the Doctor degree in physics from the University Federico II, Naples, Italy. In 1988, he won a fellowship of Ansaldo S.p.A. and was involved in the study of diffusion of gallium and aluminum in silicon. From 1990, he gained a two-year fellowship at ENEA Centro Recerche Portici on electrical and optical characterization of a-Si:H alloys. Since 1992, he has had a permanent position in the same Institute. Since 1994, he has been in charge of the R&D of smallarea a-Si:H photovoltaic devices. In 1988, he became a Project Manager of a-Si-based optoelectronic devices at ENEA-CR Portici.

R. De Rosa is a Physicist at working at ENEA as a Researcher since 1987. He is currently the Head of the Amorhous Silicon Section at the ENEA Centro Recerche Portici. His research emphasis in amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin lm ranges from the material deposition and study to the device applications. In the area of photovoltaic (PV) devices he achieved, in 1988, the rst Italian pi-n junction having an efciency conversion of 10%. In 1995, he managed the activity of device scale-up to large area that led to the European efciency record of 9.1% for a-Si tandem junction on 900 cm2 area. He is actively investigating the extensive exploitation of a-Si material for optoelectronic devices realization.

E. Terzini received the Doctor degree in physics and the Ph.D. degree in solid state physics from the University Federico II, Naples, Italy, in 1992 and 1996, respectively. Since 1994, he has had a permanent position as a Researcher at ENEA Centro Recerche Portici. He was involved in research and development of amorphous silicon-based (a-Si) optoelectronic devices. Since 1996, his main research interest has been in the eld of a-Si/c-Si heterojunctions for large-area photovoltaic applications.

Ivo Rendina, for a biography, see this issue, p. 989.