‘‘Fast’’ and ‘‘slow’’ metastable defects in hydrogenated amorphous silicon

Abstract

A two-step light soaking experiment at high and low intensities provided convincing evidence that defect generation and annealing in a-Si:H are controlled by defect states of different characteristics. We point out that the total defect by itself cannot uniquely determine the state of material or be described by a single rate equation, even though it might be the only quantity that is experimentally measurable. A system of rate equations for all defect components, therefore, must be established in order to accurately describe the defect kinetics. A simple two-component model in which defects are categorized as fast or slow is shown to be adequate to explain a variety of experimental results in a consistent fashion.