The position of the fundamental absorption edge and activation energies for thermally activated electrical conductivity in amorphous carbon layers

Abstract Amorphous carbon layers (a-C, a-C:H) with a hydrogen content between 3 at.% and 25 at.% were deposited by plasma decomposition processes, sputtering and evaporation. Their mass density values were obtained from a flotation method. The refractive index and absorption coefficient were calculated from spectrophotometric data. Special attention was paid to the Urbach tail and Tauc's plot absorption regions. The electrical conductivity was investigated in the temperature range T = 80–350 K. The conductivity values of all types of layers are discussed in terms of thermally activated conduction processes. In this sense all layers behave like semiconductors. For interpreting the conductivity values of the high gap layers, a Davis-Mott model with broad band tails was applied. However, this model was insufficient for fitting the conductivity data of samples with vanishing gaps. Reproduction of the conductivity values of these layers was possible in terms of a band model considering a structureless band at a position of 10–50 meV above the Fermi level. The conductivity of low gap samples (optical gaps around 0.3 eV) could only be fitted by a superposition of the conductivity laws following from both models. Fortuitously, the superposition of these functions yields a temperature dependence very similar to Mott's T − 1 4 law between 50 K and 300 K, which may be an explanation of this widely observed behaviour.