A search was made for a unifying rate-law with which to describe the annealing of metastable defects in hydrogenated amorphous material. The hypothesis was tested that defect annealing, by heating or illumination, was driven by the density of free electrons. This led to the rate equation, -dN/dt = An1/Nf(T), where N was the defect density, A was a constant, n was the free-electron density and f(T) was a function of temperature that depended upon the distribution of annealing energies. The model fitted 2 sets of data reasonably well, where light intensity and electrical conductivity were the independent variables and 1/ ranged from 0.39 to 0.76. It did not fit the third set, in which the temperature was varied.

H.Gleskova, S.Wagner: Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids, 1995, 190[1-2], 157-62