Time-of-flight transient photoconductivity measurements reveal a monotonic increase with the deposition pressure in the hole mobility in polymorphous silicon for samples deposited under hydrogen dilution. With helium dilution, a maximum mobility that matches the highest value from H-dilution samples is measured at the intermediate pressure of 1.4 Torr. The deposition rate of those samples is twice the rate for the H-dilution ones. For the samples with the best hole mobilities, the valence-band tail is comparable to the one of standard hydrogenated amorphous silicon. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.