Determination of Density of Localized States in Amorphous Silicon Alloys From the Low Field Conductance of Thin N-I-N Diodes

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Abstract
We describe a new technique to determine the bulk density of localized states in the energy gap of amorphous silicon alloys from the temperature dependence of the low field conductance of n-i-n diodes. This new technique allows us to determine the bulk density of states in the centre of a device, and is very straightforward, involving fewer assumptions than other established techniques. Varying the intrinsic layer thickness allows us to measure the,density of states within approximately 400 meV of midgap.We measured the temperature dependence of the low field conductance of an amorphous silicon alloy n-i-n diode with an intrinsic layer thjckness of 0.45 microns and deduced the density of localised states to be 3xlO16cm−3 eV−1 at approximately 0.5 eV below the bottom of the conduction band. We have also considered the high bias region (the space charge limited current regime) and proposed an interpolation formula which describes the current-voltage characteristics of these structures at all biases and agrees well with our computer simulation based on the solution of the complete system of transport equations.