Segmented Amorphous Silicon n-i-p Photodiodes on Stainless-Steel Foils for Flexible Imaging Arrays

Abstract

AbstractThis paper reports the first successful attempt to fabricate amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) n-i-p photodiodes on a thin stainless-steel foil substrate for medical X-ray imaging applications. Two architectures of the n-i-p-photosensor, where the top electrode is based on amorphous or polycrystalline ITO, have been developed and characterized. The impact of critical fabrication steps including the deposition of semiconductor layers, dry etch of the NIP stack, diode passivation and encapsulation, as well as a contact formation on the device performance is presented and discussed. The test structures comprising segmented photodiodes with an active area ranged from 0.126 × 0.126 to 1 × 1 mm2 have been fabricated on stainless-steel foils and on glass substrates for the purposes of process characterization. The fabricated samples are evaluated in terms of current-voltage, capacitance-voltage, and spectral response characteristics.