A study of optical absorption and photoinduced effects in Ge–Se–Te amorphous system

Abstract

Optical studies have been performed on amorphous films of the system Ge10Se90-xTex where (x = 20, 30, 40). The study revealed that as the Te content is increased, the optical band gap (Eg) was found to decrease. Photoinduced effects were studied on thin films samples irradiated with either white light or uv light. The shift in Eg due to photoirradiation disappears upon annealing the films at a temperature below the glass transition temperature. The effect of γ-radiation up to 8 kGy on the optical band gap was also investigated, and no detectable shift of the optical band gap was observed. The relationship between the optical band gap and both the average heat of atomization and the average coordination number of the compositions under investigation was studied.