NATURE OF THE SI AND N DANGLING BONDS IN SILICON-NITRIDE

Si and nitrogen dangling bond defects in amorphous silicon nitride a-S INx:H are most stable in their charged, diamagnetic states. Excitation to their paramagnetic states is found to occur by both charge convers ion of Si defects or N defects or by charge transfer between Si and N defects. The stability of charged defects is modelled in terms of pote ntial fluctuations whose magnitude exceeds their positive correlation energy.