Modulated Hall-Effect Techniques for the Study of Transport Properties of Microcrystalline Silicon with Different Grain Sizes

Abstract

AbstractHighly doped μc-Si:H samples with a wide range of crystalline volume fractions and grain sizes have been investigated by Hall-effect experiments. We present an experimental set-up with a current modulation technique and a 6-pole contact geometry which allows the measurement of the Hall-effect on highly doped μc-Si:H down to 10K. The experimental results exhibit a clear correlation between the mobility μ and the grain size δ. Further, the results show that the transport in μc-Si:H can not be described by thermal emission over grain boundaries alone, additional transport paths, e.g. tunneling processes through the barriers have to be taken into account.