This research was funded by the Research Management Office (DGI) of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). The authors have been supported by the PUCP under the PhD scholarship program Huiracocha (J A Guerra) and by the National Council of Science and Technology (CONCYTEC) under the scholarships granted to the PUCP (J R Angulo and J Llamoza). The author would like to thank Prof Dr H P Strunk, F Benz and Dr Y Weng of the University of Stuttgart for the TEM measurements.

This research was funded by the Research Management Office (DGI) of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). The authors have been supported by the PUCP under the PhD scholarship program Huiracocha (J.A. Guerra), the “Programa de repatriación” (J.A. Töfflinger), the Master scholarship (L.M. Montañez and K. Tucto) from CONCYTEC and the “Círculo de investigación” from CONCYTEC. The authors would like to thank Prof. Dr. A. R. Zanatta (IFSC-USP, Brazil) for providing access to his lab in order to perform the PL measurements and Prof. Dr. H. P. Strunk (University of Stuttgart, Germany) for helping us with the PLE measurements.

We report on the optical bandgap engineering of sputtered hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC:H) thin films under different hydrogen dilution conditions during the deposition process and after post-deposition annealing treatments. The Tauc-gap and Urbach energy are calculated from ultraviolet-visible optical transmittance measurements. Additionally, the effect of the thermal annealing temperature on the hydrogen out-diffusion is assessed through infra-red absorption spectroscopy. A new model for the optical absorption of amorphous semiconductors is presented and employed to determine the bandgap as well as the Urbach energy from a single fit of the absorption coefficient. This model allowed the discrimination of the Urbach tail from the Tauc region without any external bias. Finally, the effect of the hydrogen dilution on the band-edge and the Urbach focus is discussed.