Date of Award

1976

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE)

Department

Electrical Engineering

First Advisor

S. Merdix

Abstract

A study of thermally generated conductivity and photoconductivity in thin layers of silver sulfide is presented.

Silver layers were vacuum deposited on sapphire substrates and transformed into silver sulfide in a sulfur atmosphere at 120° C. The dark current of single element sensors was investigated as a function of temperature and photocurrent was measured as a function of photon flux and wavelength . The samples were photosensitive to radiation in the spectral range 0.7 μm to 1 .8 μm. A maximum photoresponse occurred at a wavelength of 0.8 μm. The photocurrent in general increased with decreasing temperature. The absorption edge for Ag2s at 90 K was found to be at 1.2 μm making the calculated energy gap 1.0 eV. From dark current measurements, recombination centers were found at 0.66 eV below the conduction band.

Vidicon type targets made from silver sulfide layers were also investigated and showed an image fade-out effect with a time constant in the order of seconds. Target resolution was found to exceed 10 1p/mm and the targets responded to incident photon flux levels of 30 μW/cm2.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.