Light-induced defects temperature dependence

Fig. 6.27. The time dependence of light-induced defect density at different temperatures, showing that a steady state is reached. The inset shows the steady state defect density (Stutzmann et at. 1985).

The aimealing kinetics of the light-induced defects are shown in Fig. 6.29. Several hours at 130 °C are needed to anneal the defects completely, but only a few minutes at 200 C. The relaxation is nonexponential, and in the initial measurements of the decay the results were analyzed in terms of a distribution of time constants, Eq. (6.78) (Stutzmann, Jackson and Tsai 1986). The distribution is centered close to 1 eV with a width of about 0.2 eV. Subsequently it was found that the decay fits a stretched exponential, as is shown in Fig. 6.29. The parameters of the decay-the dispersion, p, and the temperature dependence of the decay time, t - are similar to those found for the thermal relaxation data and so are consistent with the same mechanism of hydrogen diffusion. The data are included in Fig. 6.23 which describes the general relation between x and D,. The annealing is therefore the process of relaxation to the equilibrium state with a low defect density. 

In the original studies of the S-W effect on undoped and doped a-Si H films, the principal characteristics of the S-W effect and the presence of metastable defects in a-Si H were established (Staebler and Wronski, 1977 Wronski, 1978 Staebler and Wronski, 1980). It was found that the large light-induced conductivity changes are a bulk phenomenon that occurs between what may be considered a thermally stable state A and a new metastable conductivity state B. State A is perfectly reproducible and is independent of previous exposures to light. It is obtained after the a-Si H film is annealed (in the dark) at temperatures above 150 C and then cooled to room temperature. The annealing time required for state A depends on the... 

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