Density-of-states in microcrystalline silicon from thermally-stimulated conductivity

The technique of thermally-stimulated currents has been applied to extract the density-of-states profile in microcrystalline silicon. Exploiting the experimental parameter space a consistent density-of-states profile emerges with an exponential conduction band tail and a broader deeper distribution. Calibrating the absolute density-of-states profile from other techniques like modulated photoconductivity, steady-state photocarrier grating technique and intensity-dependent photoconductivity allows a determination of the capture coefficient of the probed localized states.