The microscopic structure of light-activated paramagnetic conduction band tail states and their participation in spin-dependent hopping transport is studied in a microcrystalline silicon thin-film solar cell. Application of X- and S-band electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR) experiments in combination with numerical simulations of Rabi oscillations indicates that the spin-dependent process takes place between two neighbouring band tail states. For sufficiently high microwave (mw) power, two Rabi frequencies Ω1 and Ω2 = 2Ω1 show up in the coherent EDMR signals. An analysis of their relative contributions to the Rabi traces suggests that the g-values of both spin partners are not correlated for the majority of the EDMR-active pairs. A small fraction of doublet pairs with similar g-values may explain the appearance of a larger Ω2 contribution than predicted by the simulations.
