Light receiving member having a multilayered light receiving layer composed of a lower layer made of aluminum-containing inorganic material and an upper layer made of non-single-crystal silicon material

Claim 1

A light receiving member having an aluminum support and a multilayered light receiving layer exhibiting photoconductivity formed on said aluminum support, characterized in that said multilayered light receiving layer comprises: (a) a lower layer in contact with said support and (b) an upper layer having a free surface disposed on said lower layer (a); said lower layer (a) comprising an inorganic material composed of aluminum atoms, silicon atoms, hydrogen atoms and atoms of an element capable of contributing to the control of image quality selected from the group consisting of boron, gallium, indium, thallium, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony, bismuth, sulfur, selenium, tellurium and polonium; said lower layer (a) having a portion in which said aluminum, silicon and hydrogen atoms are unevenly distributed across the layer thickness; said aluminum atoms being contained in said lower layer (a) such that their content decreases across the layer thickness in a direction upward from the interface between said lower layer (a) and said aluminum support and wherein said content of aluminum atoms is lower than 95 atomic % in the vicinity of the interface between said lower layer (a) and said aluminum support and higher than 5 atomic % in the vicinity of the interface between said lower layer (a) and said upper layer (b); said upper layer (b) comprising a plurality of layers regions, each said region comprising a non-single-crystal material composed of silicon atoms as the matrix, and wherein the layer region adjacent said lower layer (a) comprises a non-single-crystal material composed of silicon atoms as the matrix and at least one kind of atoms selected from the group consisting of hydrogen atoms and halogen atoms.