Proton-induced photoconductivity increment and the thermal stability of a-Si:H thin film

Photoconductivity (PC) variations of device-grade a-Si:H thin films due to proton irradiation are investigated in this paper. We performed in-situ measurements of the PC variations induced by 0.10, 1.0 and 10 MeV proton irradiations. The irradiation initially caused an increase in PC in all sample. However, continued irradiation resulted in a dramatic decrease as the irradiation fluence increased. The results obtained in this study suggest that the PC increment is caused not by accumulation of displacement damage. We also found that the dark conductivity (DC) was drastically increased in the same manner as the PC increment, whereas the photosensitivity had a minimum value at the peak of the PC increment. The results of the temperature dependence of PC for a-Si:H before and after 10 MeV proton irradiation showed that such a proton-induced PC increment consisted of two components: one thermally stable and one metastable. The thermally metastable component disappeared in the temperature region of 300 to 340 K. On the contrary, radiation-induced defects were annealed above 340 K.