Lattice Relaxation of Deep Defects in Light-Soaked N-Type Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe report evidence for a deep defect exhibiting very large lattice relaxation in n-type a-Si:H. In light-soaked partially-annealed samples with low phosphorus doping levels one obtains large controlled variation of the Fermi energy position in the mobility gap. Examination by photocapacitance spectroscopy of a sample having a Fermi energy near the minimum in the density of states shows dramatic change in the shape of the photocapacitance spectra. We interpret this as strong evidence for lattice relaxation of deep defects.