Inadequacy of the Conventional View of Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe conventional view of the electronic structure of hydrogenated amorphous silicon is: (1) the material is characterized by a mobility gap of about 1.8 eV, with exponential band tails due to disorder and deep defect states arising from silicon dangling bonds (T3 centers); (2) substitutional doping occurs because of the formation of chargedimpurity/dangling-bond pairs, e.g. P4+ – T3-, at the substrate temperature; (3) the effective correlation of the T3 center is about 0.4 eV; (4) T3o centers are the predominant recombination center; (5) the three intrinsic ESR signals are due to electrons on T3o centers, electrons in the conduction band tail, and holes in the valence band tail. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that this model is in sharp disagreement with an array of basic experimental data, and much of the evidence presented in its favor is based on self-inconsistent logic. We conclude that it is very likely that large concentrations of charged intrinsic defect pairs are present in all hydrogenated amorphous silicon films.