GENERALIZED DEFECT ANNIHILATION KINETICS FOR STRUCTURAL RELAXATION IN AMORPHOUS-SILICON

Abstract

A general approach to the dynamics of structural relaxation in amorphous silicon is developed. A form is chosen for the recombination kinetics of defects which removes the ad-hoc assumption made in previous approaches, namely that defects recombine only with others of identical activation energy. The generalized approach is tested quantitatively by modelling the structural relaxation of amorphous silicon and comparing the results with the experimental data. It is found that the generalized recombination kinetics formalism is necessary in order to describe accurately the time-resolved relaxation data.