Very low densities of localized states at the Fermi level in hydrogenated polymorphous silicon from capacitance and space-charge-limited current measurements

The density of states at the Fermi level N(EF) has been measured on hydrogenated polymorphous (pm-Si:H) silicon samples using both capacitance measurements on Schottky barriers and space-charge-limited current measurements on n+/i/n+ structures. From both techniques, N(EF) values of 7–8×1014 cm−3 eV−1 have been obtained, which is significantly lower than reported in the literature for hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H). Such values demonstrate that pm-Si:H is a very low defect density material which should be able to replace a-Si:H in the field of applications like photovoltaics.