Measurement of Two Deep H Bonding Levels in Device Quality Glow Discharge a-SI:H

ABSTRACTWe present the results of H effusion studies on device-quality glow discharge deposited hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films. We measure the decrease in the amount of Si-H infrared absorption as pieces of an a-Si:H sample are annealed isothermally at temperatures from 425°C to 500°C, until more than 95% of the initial H is evolved. We use the rate equation for loss of H due to annealing to calculate the activation energy for H effusion. For anneals below 500°C we observe two distinct rate processes, a fast process corresponding to release of ∼ 70% of the total H (∼10 at. %) contained in the sample, and a slower process corresponding to effusion of the remainder. The fast loss process yields an activation energy of ∼1.4 eV; this is the energy level widely observed in diffusion coefficient measurements. A similar analysis for the slow loss process yields an activation energy of ∼2.1 eV and a diffusion constant prefactor higher than that for the fast loss process. We suggest that this slow component represents the first determination of the energy depth of the “isolated” H component commonly observed in nuclear magnetic resonance experiments.