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The Meyer-Neldel Rule in Conductivity of Microcrystalline Silicon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Sanjay K. Ram ,
Satyendra Kumar  and
P. Rocai Cabarrocas
Sanjay K. Ram
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, India
Satyendra Kumar
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, India
P. Rocai Cabarrocas
Affiliation:
LPICM, UMR 7647 – CNRS – Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France
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Abstract

The dark conductivity (σd) has been measured from 300 to 440K on undoped hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H) films having different thicknesses. The carrier transport is found to be thermally activated with single activation energy (Ea) in all the samples. The Ea increases as the film thickness decreases. At the same time logarithmic of dark conductivity prefactor (σo) is found to follow a linear relation with activation energy, known as the Meyer-Neldel rule (MNR). Results are explained in terms of increased degree of disorder in thinner samples. Thus change in Ea with the film thickness is directly related to the density of localized states at the Fermi level in grain boundary (GB). Therefore varying the film thickness and, hence, the exponential density of states induces a statistical shift of Fermi level which gives rise to the observed MNR.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 715: Symposium A – Amorphous and Heterogeneous Silicon-Based Films-2002 , 2002 , A21.4
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2002

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