Abstract
We study the creation of metastable defects induced by illumination with laser light (the Stabler-Wronski effect) in stoichiometric hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a-Si1-xC x : H). We follow the defect creation kinetics through the decrease in photoluminescence as a function of time and incident power. A stretched-exponential increase in the number of defects is found, in very much the same way as in hydrogenated amorphous silicon but with different material parameters. Comparison is made with the available models. From the time t and power P dependences of the measured increase in the number of defect, we conclude that the well-known P 2/3 t 1/3 law does not hold for a-Si1-xC x : H. The details of the power dependence of the defect creation show that the mechanism of reconfiguration of defects is more appropriate. Finally, it is shown that illumination with subbandgap light, normalized to the same number of absorbed photons, produces only smali changes. This phenomenon can be introduced into the models through a maximum configuration energy of a state that can be transformed into a non-radiative centre.