Radiative and non-radiative tunnelling in glow-discharge and sputtered amorphous silicon

Abstract

Abstract Photoluminescence decay measurements are reported for doped and undoped glow-discharge a-Si, and for a-Si prepared by sputtering in a hydrogenated atmo-sphere. It is concluded that a distribution of radiative lifetimes is present, due either to non-crystalline disorder or to a donor-acceptor pair mechanism. The main competitive mechanism is tunnelling to defects.