Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2011
The dynamics of a photogenerated electron-hole plasma in pure amorphous silicon (a-Si) in different stages of structural relaxation have been studied with sub-picosecond resolution using pump-probe reflectivity measurements. For high plasma densities (> 1020/cm3) the plasma evolution is dominated by Auger recombination. At lower plasma densities (≈ 1018/cm3) the plasma decays exponentially with a time constant τ, suggesting that carrier trapping dominates in this regime. The decay time τ increases with the temperature at which the a-Si has been annealed, ranging from τ = 1 ps for as-implanted a-Si to τ=14 ps for a-Si annealed at 500 °C. This observation is consistent with a reduction in the number of defects in a-Si upon thermal annealing.