Density Of Deep Bandgap States In Amorphous Silicon From The Temperature Dependence Of Thin Film Transistor Current

We have measured the current-voltage characteristics of amorphous silicon thin film transistors (a-Si TFTs) over a wide range of temperatures (20 to 160°C) and determined the activation energy of the channel current as a function of gate bias with emphasis on the leakage current and subthreshold regimes. We propose a new method for estimating the density of localized states (DOS) from the dependence of the derivative of activation energy with respect to gate bias. This differential technique does not require knowledge of the flat-band voltage (V FB) and does not incorporate integration over gate bias. Using this Method, we have characterized the density of localized states with energies in the range 0.15–1.2 eV from the bottom of the conduction band and have found a wide peak in the DOS in the range of 0.8–0.95 eV below the conduction band. We have also observed that the DOS peak in the lower half of the bandgap increases in magnitude and shifts towards the conduction band as a result of thermal and bias stress. We also measured an overall increase in the DOS in the upper half of the energy gap and an additional peak, centered at 0.2 eV below the conduction band, which appear due to the applied stress. These results are in qualitative agreement with the defect pool Model [1,2].