RECOMBINATION-ENHANCED DEFECT FORMATION AND ANNEALING IN a-Si:H.

Despite efforts to elucidate the light-induced (or current-induced) instability in a-Si:H, one approach has been largely neglected. This approach is the exploitation of analogies between the formation and annealing of metastable defects (MSDs) in a-Si:H and the recombination-induced defect reactions in crystalline semiconductors. Defect reactions are any bond rearrangements around a defect, including the motion or creation of a defect. Recent efforts using this approach have (1) produced a conclusion that the light-induced effects in a-Si:H are probably of extrinsic origin, in disagreement with current intrinsic models; and (2) shown that a class of physical processes has been overlooked in kinetic analyses of MSD densities. This paper summarizes this approach and its results to date.