Hydrogenated amorphous silicon films have been grown by radio frequency (rf) plasma chemical vapor deposition with the addition of small amounts (up to 20%) of dichlorosilane to the silane. Results show that as the amount of dichlorosilane is increased, the films are more resilient to the creation of light induced defects. Under intense pulsed laser illumination (5 mJ/pulse, 10 ns, 10 Hz) the steady state defect density measured by the constant photocurrent method (CPM) is reduced by over one order of magnitude to 4×1016cm−3as compared to ∼5×1017cm−3for films grown under identical conditions with pure silane. Furthermore, there is a threefold increase in the deposition rate over the range of mixture ratios studied here. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.