Unification of the time and temperature dependence of dangling-bond-defect creation and removal in amorphous-silicon thin-film transistors

Abstract

We present a thermalization-energy concept that unifies the time and temperature dependence of Si dangling-bond-defect creation and removal in amorphous-silicon thin-film transistors. There is a distribution of energy barriers for defect creation and removal, with the most probable energy barrier being 1.0 eV for defect creation and between 1.1 and 1.5 eV for defect removal, depending on how the defects were initially created. We suggest defect creation proceeds via Si-Si bond breaking, whereas defect removal proceeds by release of H from a SiHD complex.