Amorphous Silicon Image Pickup Devices

Reactively sputtered amorphous silicon film is used as a photoconductive target of the vidicon type image pickup tube. Variation of tube characteristics with the hydrogen partial pressure in the discharge gas during sputtering are investigated. The results indicate that hydrogenated amorphous silicon films prepared in hydrogen partial pressures of 1∼2×10 -3 Torr are suitable for image pickup tubes. This amorphous silicon vidicon has several excellent characteristics: better sensitivity of about twice that of the conventional tubes, high resolution, little after-image, and no blooming.