THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF THE OPTICAL-ABSORPTION TAIL IN AMORPHOUS SEMICONDUCTOR SUPERLATTICES

We propose a two-band tight-binding model Hamiltonian to describe the behaviour of electrons in amorphous semiconductor superlattices. Our model Hamiltonian is characterized by its off-diagonal terms υz in direction z which is perpendicular to layers in a superlattice; we define υz as a parameter which represents the dimension of well layers accompanying the change in a well-layer width Lw under the condition that a barrier-layer width is fixed. On the basis of this model, we calculate the density of states D(E) and the absorption spectra I(E), from which we estimate the exponential-tail widths E0 and Eu of D(E) and I(E), respectively. We discuss the ways in which these widths E0 and Eu are influenced (i) by the dimension of the system, (ii) by the dispersion of well-layer widths and (iii) by the degree of disorder. We also propose the possibility to improve the photovoltaic efficiency in solar cells composed of amorphous semiconductor superlattices.