Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.

Yukio Nakashima

Kaneo Watanabe

Hisao Haku

Tsugufumi Matsuoka

Yukinori Kuwano

Shigeru Noguchi

Hiroaki Izu

Akira Terakawa

Hiroyuki Kuriyama

Masato Nishikuni

Shinya Tsuda

Makoto Tanaka

Takeo Tsutsumi

An electrostatic motor for use as a power generating mechanism to be mounted on a micromachine includes a rotatable semiconductor substrate and a drive electrode disposed in proximity to the substrate. The semiconductor substrate is doped with a specified impurity element to form electromagnetic wave-static electric converters of p-n junction. When the motor is to be started, the converter in the vicinity of the electrode is irradiated with electromagnetic waves to set up an electric field between the opposed surfaces of the converter and the electrode to rotate the substrate by an electrostatic force due to the electric field.

Micromachine

A photovoltaic device has at least one set of amorphous semiconductor layers forming a p-i-n junction structure, wherein at least one of the semiconductor layers having a given thickness, is doped with nitrogen and oxygen to a depth forming at least part of said given thickness. Such a photovoltaic device is fabricated by depositing on a substrate at least one set of amorphous semiconductor layers which form a p-i-n junction structure, and by doping at least one of the layers with nitrogen and oxygen to a depth forming at least part of the thickness of the doped layer.

Photovoltaic device with O and N doping

A photovoltaic device comprises a transparent front electrode, an amorphous semiconductor film containing at least one p-i-n junction and a metallic back electrode, wherein the n-layer neighboring on the back electrode includes at least one first type sub-layer of an alloyed amorphous silicon which contains not only hydrogen and a dopant for n-conductivity type but also at least one element selected from nitrogen, oxygen and carbon, and at least one second type sub-layer of an amorphous silicon which contains hydrogen and a dopant for n conductivity type.

Photovoltaic device

A first photovoltaic device according to the present invention comprises a plurality of unit photovoltaic cells layered in optical series, each unit photovoltaic cell including an optically active layer made of amorphous silicon and two impurity doped layers of opposite conductivity types arranged at opposite sides of the optically active layer; wherein a first impurity doped layer of a first unit photovoltaic cell located at the contact interface with a second unit photovoltaic cell is made of a first amorphous silicon alloy of first conductivity type, having an optically forbidden band width wider than that of amorphous silicon, and a second impurity doped layer of said second photovoltaic cell located at said contact interface is made of a second amorphous silicon alloy, different from said first amorphous silicon alloy, of opposite conductivity type from said first conductivity type, having an optically forbidden band width wider than that of the amorphous silicon. A second photovoltaic device according to the present invention further comprises an additional impurity doper layer of either of the two conductivity types and made of non-monocrystalline ailicon, interposed between said first and second impurity layers.

A method for producing a semiconductor device uses trimethyl boron (B(CH.sub.3).sub.3) of triethyl boron (B(C.sub.2 H.sub.5).sub.3) or a mixture thereof as a p-type dopant and/or a band gap widening source material gas in a process for forming a p-type amorphous semiconductor film. Accordingly, the quantity and the number of different gases which are used can be reduced and also the photoconductivity and dark conductivity can be improved, whereby a semiconductor device suitable for photovoltaic cells, photo sensors and the like using a p-type amorphous semiconductor film having a wide optical band gap can be produced.

Method for producing semiconductor device with p-type amorphous silicon

A method for fabricating a periodically multilayered film having a plurality of amorphous thin layers of different kinds stacked periodically is performed by forming at least one kind of the layers in the stack by a photo CVD method, whereby a more definite periodicity in the composition of the lattice and fewer defects are achieved.

Method for fabricating periodically multilayered film

A photovoltaic device has a semiconductive multilayer of one conductivity type, which includes a plurality of amorphous thin constituent layers of different kinds stacked periodically to form at least one quantum well. A semiconductor layer of an i-type, which is contiguous to the multilayer so that light may be applied to the i-type layer through the multilayer.

Growing community of inventors

Hirakata, Japan

Yukio Nakashima