Effects of tail states on the conduction mechanisms in silicon carbide thin films with high carbon content

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiCx:H) films of different carbon content (x) were deposited by radio frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system. Apart from the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and UV–Visible transmission analyses, the resistivity measurements between 293 K and 450 K were emphasized to assess the eventual transport mechanisms. The film resistivities are unexpectedly found relatively low, especially for high carbon content. In the frame of exclusive band conduction, the apparent thermal activation energies, evaluated from Arrhenius type plot remain too low compared to half values of the optical gaps.Numerical analyses were undertaken by extending conduction from the band conduction about the mobility edge inside the band gap by including the nearest neighbor hopping (NNH) conduction across the localized tail states. By successfully fitting the formulated conductivity expression to the experimental results, parameters such as tail states distributions, true activation energies to the mobility edge have been retrieved.

Research highlights
► a-SiCx:H films were grown by RF PECVD to be the samples with different DOS.
► Apparent activation energies lower than expected were obtained by Arrhenius plot.
► Localized tail states were numerically determined without any asymptotic approach.
► Nearest neighbor hopping conduction at tail states were numerically simulated.
► Fitting to measured conductivities increased activation energies with C content.