Frigeri Cesare, Serényi Miklós, Khánh Nguyen Quoc, Csik Attila, Riesz Ferenc, Erdélyi Zoltán, Nasi Lucia, Beke Dezső László, Boyen Hans-Gerd
CNR-IMEM Institute, Parco Area delle Scienze 37/A, 43100 Parma, Italy.
Nanoscale Res Lett. 2011 Mar 1;6(1):189. doi: 10.1186/1556-276X-6-189.
Hydrogenated multilayers (MLs) of a-Si/a-Ge have been analysed to establish the reasons of H release during annealing that has been seen to bring about structural modifications even up to well-detectable surface degradation. Analyses carried out on single layers of a-Si and a-Ge show that H is released from its bond to the host lattice atom and that it escapes from the layer much more efficiently in a-Ge than in a-Si because of the smaller binding energy of the H-Ge bond and probably of a greater weakness of the Ge lattice. This should support the previous hypothesis that the structural degradation of a-Si/a-Ge MLs primary starts with the formation of H bubbles in the Ge layers.
