The saturation behaviour of metastable defect creation in a-Ge:H investigated by keV-electron irradiation

Author

Scholz, A. ; Schroder, B. ; Oechsner, H.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys., Kaiserslautern Univ., Germany

fYear

1993

fDate

10-14 May 1993

Firstpage

907

Lastpage

912

Abstract

We report on the stability of differently prepared high quality a-Ge:H using keV-electron irradiation as a fast and strong degradation technique for the creation of metastable defects. The influence of film properties on the saturation defect density is carefully studied and a chemical equilibrium model developed for a-Si:H is successfully applied to a-Ge:H. This allows to calculate the saturation defect density of a-Ge:H from its initial film properties. Analysing the chemical equilibrium the influence of specific parameters like hydrogen content and Urbach energy on the saturation defect density after keV-electron irradiation is examined and proposals for the improvement of the stability of a-Ge:H against metastable defect creation are made and experimentally confirmed. The experiments reveal no indication for a principally different stability behaviour of a-Ge:H compared to a-Si:H

Keywords

amorphous semiconductors; chemical equilibrium; electron beam effects; elemental semiconductors; germanium; hydrogen; Ge:H; H content; Si:H; Urbach energy; a-Ge:H; a-Si:H; chemical equilibrium model; degradation technique; film properties; keV-electron irradiation; metastable defect creation; metastable defects; saturation behaviour; saturation defect density; stability; Absorption; Chemical analysis; Degradation; Electrons; Germanium; Hydrogen; Metastasis; Optical films; Photovoltaic cells; Stability;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 1993., Conference Record of the Twenty Third IEEE

Conference_Location

Louisville, KY

Print_ISBN

0-7803-1220-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.1993.347100

Filename

347100