Evidence for the hydrogen-glass model of metastability annealing in phosphorus-doped amorphous silicon

Hydrogen Equilibration and Metastability in Amorphous Silicon

We review evidence for the vital role of H in metastability and defect equilibration in hydrogenated amorphous silicon. H pairs act both as an H reservoir that equilibrates with DB's and dopants and as the metastable H state of light-induced metastability. With ab initio pseudopotential theory, we calculate energies and configurations for two novel H pairing sites associated with small hydrogenated vacancies. We describe microscopic models of equilibration and metastability based on our calculations.