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Capacitance Studies of Metastable Defect Creation in Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2011

J. D. Cohen
Affiliation:
University of Oregon, Department of Physics, Eugene, Oregon 97403
K. Mahavadi
Affiliation:
University of Oregon, Department of Physics, Eugene, Oregon 97403
K. Zellama
Affiliation:
Present address: Universite Paris VII, 75521 Paris Cedex 05, France
J. P. Harbison
Affiliation:
Bell Communications Research, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
A. E. Delahoy
Affiliation:
Chronar Corporation, Princeton, New Jersey 08542
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Abstract

We have studied the light induced instability problem in hydrogenated amorphous silicon using junction capacitance techniques. These techniques are used to examine specific changes in the density of gap states, and occupation of gap states, for undoped a-Si:H samples after light saturation and for a series of partial anneal “states” which culminate in the original dark annealed state (state A). We find that the observed changes in the metastable occupied and unoccupied defects contradict the Si-Si bond breaking model and indicate at least two defect creation processes. In several samples we also find clear evidence that the metastable defect distribution near midgap has a slightly different energy distribution than the stable deep state (dangling bond) distribution. At the same time, these results seem to be qualitatively consistent with many aspects of recent ESR and optical absorption studies of metastable defect creation. We discuss these findings in terms of alternative possible microscopic models for metastable effects in a-Si:H.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1986

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References

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