Electron light-induced defect

While most of the research in metastable defect formation has focussed on light-induced defects, there has recently been growing interest in thermally generated defects. Smith and Wagner (1985 Smith et al., 1986) extended the proposed Staebler-Wronski mechanism of electron-hole recombination via band tail states, resulting in the formation of dangling... 

The optical transition moments for vibrational or electronic transitions between defect states have specific orientations with respect to the defect coordinates. The absorption strength of polarized light for each of the differently oriented centers is proportional to the square of the component of the transition moment that is along the polarization direction. Hence, a stress-induced redistribution of the defects among their different orientations will be detected as an anisotropy in the polarized optical absorption. A convenient measure of the anisotropy is the dichroic ratio, defined as... 

The optical absorption arising from the defect transitions is weak because of the low defect densities and in a thin film cannot be measured by optical transmission. The techniques of PDS, CPM and photoemission yield, described in Section 3.3, have sufficient sensitivity. Photocapacitance, which measures the light-induced change in the depletion layer capacitance, is similarly sensitive to weak absorption (Johnson and Biegelsen 1985). PDS measures the heat absorbed in the sample and detects all of the possible optical transitions. At room temperature virtually all the recombination is non-radiative and generates heat by phonon emission. CPM detects photocarriers and so is primarily sensitive to the optical transitions which excite electrons to... 

Luminophores are substances which light up in certain colors, depending on their chemical structure, when irradiated with visible light, X-rays or electrons. Thus the incorporation of Sn ions in the crystal lattice of MgBrj or its hydrate induces defect sites which cause the light emission responsible for the color observed. Luminophores can be tailormade by the selective introduction of such activators" (generally alkaline earth cations) into the crystal lattice. 

Small semiconductor particles are characterized by a high extent of lattice defects affecting bond lengths (ref. 10) and solubility (ref. 21) and leading to surface states energetically located within the band gap (refs. 22, 23). The surface states trap electrons and therefore suppress the recombination of light induced electron-hole pairs. The holes remain available for photocorrosion, i.e. the oxidation of sulfide ions belonging to the lattice of the semiconductor. 

Light-induced processes are described quite differently in molecular photochemistry and solid-state photophysics. In photochemistry one is used to an atomistic picture in which the arrangement of the atoms in the structure of a single molecule determines the electronic levels and thus the photochemical behavior. In contrast, the electronic levels of a solid are determined by the infinite periodicity of the atomic sequence in the crystal lattice. This leads to a basic concept according to which the solid can be treated as a dielectric continuum. Atomistic irregularities in the crystalline structure, such as lattice defects or impurities, are treated as perturbations of the spatially independent states in the energy bands. 

---