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Electrically Detected HYSCORE on Conduction Band Tail States in \(^{29}\)Si-Enriched Microcrystalline Silicon

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Abstract

Electrically detected hyperfine sublevel correlation (ED-HYSCORE) measurements are presented and employed to study spin-dependent transport in thin-film microcrystalline silicon solar cells. We explore the hyperfine coupling between paramagnetic conduction band tail states involved in hopping transport and neighboring 29Si nuclei at low temperature (\(T = 5\) K). ED-HYSCORE measurements performed on solar cells with 29Si-enriched absorber layers reveal that the hyperfine interaction between these current-influencing centers and 29Si nuclei in the surroundings is dominated by isotropic couplings up to \(\sim\)4 MHz, whereas the anisotropic contributions are small. This indicates that the wave function of the conduction band tail states is distributed over several nuclei. Our results demonstrate that the ED-HYSCORE technique can provide helpful insight into the microscopic structure of transport-relevant paramagnetic states and thus usefully complement the toolbox of electrically detected magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

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Acknowledgments

We thank K.-P. Dinse for helpful discussions and gratefully acknowledge the financial support from BMBF (EPR-Solar network project 03SF0328), DFG (SPP 1601) and the Helmholtz Association (Energie-Allianz Hybrid-Photovoltaik).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Berlin Joint EPR Lab, Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 14, 14159, Berlin, Germany

    Christoph Meier, Christian Teutloff, Robert Bittl & Jan Behrends

  2. Institut für Energie- und Klimaforschung 5-Photovoltaik, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany

    Oleksandr Astakhov & Friedhelm Finger

Authors
  1. Christoph Meier
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  2. Christian Teutloff
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  3. Oleksandr Astakhov
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  4. Friedhelm Finger
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  5. Robert Bittl
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  6. Jan Behrends
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Correspondence to Jan Behrends.

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Meier, C., Teutloff, C., Astakhov, O. et al. Electrically Detected HYSCORE on Conduction Band Tail States in \(^{29}\)Si-Enriched Microcrystalline Silicon. Appl Magn Reson 45, 1075–1086 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00723-014-0589-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00723-014-0589-4

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