Evolution with light soaking of the conduction band tail of amorphous-silicon-like materials

The influences of light soaking and annealing processes on the density of states above the Fermi level for different types of intrinsic amorphous-silicon-like materials are presented. After only 2 mn of light soaking, an increase of the dangling bonds (DB) density if noticeable. After saturation, an increase of both the DB and the conduction band tail states is observed. It is also shown that the influence of the annealing process is material dependent. These data are supported by some other recent experimental results. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)02648-6].