Abstract
The concept of electronic doping is used to explain unexpectedly large values of the diode quality factor (exceeding two) and supralinearity which is sometimes observed in amorphous silicon p-i-n-type diodes and materials, respectively. This suggests the presence of an extra set of defect states in lightly boron-doped films with a capture rate for electrons which is much larger than that of the inherent defect states. We also report that for high-quality undoped intrinsic layers, the photoconductivity versus intensity behavior exhibits sublinear power dependence which increases with intensity in distinct contrast to the previously reported results. We provide a self-consistent model which is able to explain the above observations.