Microscopic nature of Staebler-Wronski defect formation in amorphous silicon.

Light-induced metastable defects in a-Si:H are proposed to be silicon dangling bonds accompanied by pairs of hydrogen atoms breaking a silicon bond, forming a complex with two Si-H bonds. This supports the model of Branz. These defects are the analog of the H[sub 2][sup *] defect in c-Si and their energy correlates with the bond-angle strain. Several features of the annealing are well described by this defect complex. © 1998 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]