Metastable Defects in Light Soaked Amorphous Silicon at 77 K

Conference · Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2008

OSTI ID:958227

Ju, T; Stradins, P; Taylor, P C

We have observed the growth of defects caused by optical illumination in liquid nitrogen. We kept the sample in liquid nitrogen over one year. After one year and half the ESR signal reached <<10{sup 18} cm{sup -3} with no evidence of saturation. After that, we step-wise annealed isochronal the sample up to room temperature, where two thirds of original defects were annealed out. After room temperature, the sample was annealing isothermally around 300 K for several months. At this temperature, the defects slowly anneal. After a hundred of hours at 295K, the defect density decreased 10x from its original value at 77K.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-99-GO10337
• OSTI ID: 958227
• Resource Relation: Conference: Amorphous and Polycrystalline Thin-Film Silicon Science and Technology - 2008: Proceedings of the Materials Research Society Symposium, 25-28 March 2008, San Francisco, California; Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings, Vol. 1066; Related Information: Paper No. 1066-A02-04
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ANNEALING
DEFECTS
ILLUMINANCE
NITROGEN
SATURATION
SILICON
Solar Energy - Photovoltaics
Silicon Materials and Devices