Patent ID: 7229731

Claim:
An electrophotographic photosensitive member comprising a substrate, a photoconductive layer formed on the substrate and a surface layer formed on the photoconductive layer using silicon and nitrogen atoms as the base material and constituted of non-single-crystal material at least containing oxygen atoms, characterized in that the surface layer contains nitrogen atoms as an average concentration shown by the following expression (1) and contains oxygen atoms by the maximum value Omax of the number of oxygen atoms in the thickness direction: 0.3≦N/(Si+N)≦0.7 (1) wherein N denotes the number of nitrogen atoms and Si denotes the number of silicon atoms; and the surface layer contains oxygen atoms by the minimum value Omin of the number of oxygen atoms in the thickness direction and the minimum value Omin satisfies the relation shown by the following expression (2): 2≦Omax/Omin (2).