Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2011
Hydrogen's role in the doping efficiency and long term stability of hydrogenated amorphous silicon is not well understood. The introduction of dopants has been observed to cause an increase in the deposition rate and in the formation of dangling bonds. We have performed NMR spin echo double resonance measurements on heavily doped amorphous silicon samples prepared via plasma deposition in order to ascertain the dopanthydrogen structural units. The resulting dopant concentrations were 2.0 and 0.5 at. % boron and/or phosphorus in compensated and singly doped material respectively. Our results indicate no direct dopant-hydrogen bonding in the compensated or n-type samples. However, in the p-type material the data indicate that approximately 40% of the boron atoms are directly bonded to a hydrogen.