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Physics of the Meyer-Neldel Rule in Amorphous Silicon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2011

Howard M. Branz ,
Arthur Yelon  and
Bijan Movaghar
Howard M. Branz
Affiliation:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA
Arthur Yelon
Affiliation:
École Polytechnique, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Bijan Movaghar
Affiliation:
Ruhr Universität, Bochum, Germany
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Abstract

We show that the meyer-Neldel Rule (or compensation law) arises from the entropy effect of accumulating several excitations in order to surmount an activation barrier. This explanation applies both to annealing and to conductivity phenomena in a-Si:H. We consider three consequences of this theory for a-Si:H : 1) MN processes in a-Si:H involve coupling to a bath of “optical” phonons; 2) dc conductivity involves strongly electron-phonon coupled states rather than extended electrons and a fixed density of states; and 3) time-of-flight exponents depend upon the MN temperature.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 336: Symposium A – Amorphous Silicon Technology - 1994 , 1994 , 159
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1994

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References

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