Eur. Phys. J. B 51, 61-64 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00198-5

Temperature dependence of photoluminescence in amorphous Si_1-xC_x:H films

Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée, CNRS-École Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau, France

Corresponding author: ^a Kamila.rerbal@polytechnique.fr

Received: 18 January 2006
Revised: 29 March 2006
Published online: 31 May 2006

Abstract

We have investigated the temperature dependence of photoluminescence in hydrogenated amorphous silicon-carbon alloys a-Si_1-xC_x:H prepared by glow discharge in the low-power regime. The radiative recombination process, due to photocarriers trapped on band-edge states, is in competition with the thermal escape of the photocarriers into the mobility bands. The model gives a quantitative fit with experiment, without any adjustable parameter, provided the width of the band-edge distribution of states is taken as the width of the conduction band only (measured by “photo-induced infra-red spectroscopy”) and not as the Urbach energy, as it is usually assumed.