Steady state defect density and annealing kinetics of light-induced defects in a-Si:H deposited from 'new' deposition techniques

In an attempt to correlate the material parameters and deposition process with material stability, the defect annealing distribution of light-induced defects of hydrogenated silicon thin films grown by a variety of deposition techniques has been investigated. It was found that the details of the annealing energy distribution were dependent on the particular deposition process, but all could be described by a single gaussian of annealing energies. In this study, it was found that the best hydrogenated amorphous silicon films were grown from plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition using pure silane far from depletion conditions, low dilution dichlorosilane-silane gas mixtures, and the triode mesh biasing technique.