Measurements of the cooling rate of hot carriers in amorphous silicon are made with a two-pump, one-probe technique. Pump photons at 2 eV create free carriers and pump photons at 1.42 eV heat the carriers up to 1.2 eV/pair. The experiment is simulated with a rate-equation model describing the energy transfer between a population of hot carriers and the lattice. An energy transfer rate proportional to the temperature difference is found to be consistent with the experimental data. An energy transfer rate independent of the temperature difference is inconsistent with the data. This contrasts with the situation in crystalline silicon and GaAs. The measured cooling time, 0.2 ps, is sufficient to explain the absence of avalanche effects in amorphous silicon at fields below 106 V/cm.
Measurements of the cooling rate of hot carriers in amorphous silicon are made with a two-pump, one-probe technique. The experiment is simulated with a rate-equation model describing the energy transfer between a population of hot carriers and the lattice. An energy transfer rate proportional to the temperature difference is found to be consistent with the experimental data while an energy transfer independent of the temperature difference is not. This contrasts with the situation in crystalline silicon. The measured cooling rates are sufficient to explain the difficulty in observing avalanche effects in amorphous silicon.
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