Role of Dislocation Scattering on the Electron Mobility of n-Type Long Wave Length Infrared HgCdTe on Silicon

It has been reported that the basic electrical properties of n-type long wave length infrared (LWIR) HgCdTe grown on silicon, including the majority carrier mobility (μ _e) and minority carrier lifetime (τ), are qualitatively comparable to those reported for LWIR HgCdTe grown on bulk CdZnTe by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Detailed measurements of the majority carrier mobility have revealed important differences between the values measured for HgCdTe grown on bulk CdZnTe and those measured for HgCdTe grown on buffered silicon substrates. The mobility of LWIR HgCdTe grown on buffered silicon by MBE is reported over a large temperature range and is analyzed in terms of standard electron scattering mechanisms. The role of dislocation scattering is addressed for high dislocation density HgCdTe grown on lattice-mismatched silicon. Differences between the low temperature mobility data of HgCdTe grown on bulk CdZnTe and HgCdTe grown on silicon are partially explained in terms of the dislocation scattering contribution to the total mobility.     

High-temperature electron mobilities in LPE-Grown GaP

We report measurements to 500°C of resistivity and Hall mobility in Sn-doped, n-type GaP grown by liquid phase epitaxy. Samples with room-temperature carrier densities between 1 × 10¹⁶ and 1 × 10¹⁸cm⁻³ were studied. Mobilities were in the range 100–180 cm²/V-sec at room temperature and in the range 27–35 cm²/V-sec at 400°C. Carrier densities increased by only about a factor of two with increasing temperature. Theoretical fits to the mobility data were made by considering contributions from intervalley, polar-optic, acoustic-deformation-potential, and ionlzed-impurity scattering mechanisms. Our results confirm the utility of GaP for high-temperature device applications and provide important information on electrical parameters needed for device modeling and design.     

The temperature and pressure dependence of the electron and hole mobilities in GaxIn1-xAsyP1-y alloys

A wide range of samples of both n-type and p-type Ga_xIn_1-xAs_yP_1-y on InP has been grown by LPE with carrier concentrations in the low 10¹⁶cm⁻³range. The electron mobility (μ_e) at room temperature decreased from about 4000 cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹ at y = 0 and passed through a shallow minimum near y = 0.25. At high y values, μ_e rose steeply, reaching 11 000 cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹ at the ternary boundary. In the p-type material the hole mobility (μ_p) varied from 140 cm V⁻¹s⁻¹ in InP, passed through a minimum of about 70 cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹ near y = 0.5 and then increased swiftly towards the ternary boundary. The temperature dependence of both μ_e and μ_p suggested the presence of alloy or space-charge scattering. In order to distinguish between these two mechanisms the pressure coefficient of the direct band-gap dE_o/dP was measured as a function of y by observing the movement with pressure of the photoconductive edge. From dE_o/dP the pressure variation of the effective mass was deduced. By measuring the change in electron and hole mobilities with pressure, it was then possible to establish that alloy scattering rather than space-charge scattering was occurring. From the composition dependence of the alloy scattering potentials for electrons and holes predictions have been made of the variation of μ_e and μ_P with temperature, pressure and dopant Presently a Nuffield Science Fellow concentration. At room temperature a maximum electron mobility of about 11,200 cm²V⁻¹ s⁻¹ is indicated. Presently a Nuffield Science Fellow     

Investigation of Multicarrier Transport in LPE-Grown Hg<Subscript>1−<Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript>Cd<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript>Te Layers

A detailed study is presented of multicarrier transport properties in liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE)-grown n-type HgCdTe films using advanced mobility spectrum analysis techniques over the temperature range from 95 K to 300 K. Three separate electron species were identified that contribute to the total conduction, and the temperature-dependent characteristics of carrier concentration and mobility were extracted for each individual carrier species. Detailed analysis allows the three observed contributions to be assigned to carriers located in the bulk long-wave infrared (LWIR) absorbing layer, the wider-gap substrate/HgCdTe transition layer, and a surface accumulation layer. The activation energy of the dominant high-mobility LWIR bulk carrier concentration in the high temperature range gives a very good fit to the Hansen and Schmit expression for intrinsic carrier concentration in HgCdTe with a bandgap of 172 meV. The mobility of these bulk electrons follows the classic μ ~ T ^−3/2 dependence for the phonon scattering regime. The much lower sheet densities found for the other two, lower-mobility electron species show activation energies of the order of ~20 meV, and mobilities that are only weakly dependent on temperature and consistent with expected values for the wider-bandgap transition layer and a surface accumulation layer.     

Electronic transport properties of tungsten silicide thin films

Tungsten suicide thin films have been prepared by neutralized ion beam sputtering of the metal onto a polycrystalline silicon layer followed by furnace annealing. The films appear to be essentially sing le-phase disilicide with thepossibility of a percent or so carbon and oxygen content. The material behaves as a classical metallic conductor, with a temperature-independent residual resistivity of 16 μΩ-cm and a room temperature intrinsic resistivity of 7 μΩ-cm. Hall effect measurements indicate the material is predominantly a hole conductor, with a room temperature Hall mobility of 30cm²/V^-s and an apparent free carrier concentration of 8.9×10²¹ cm⁻³. The effective one-carrier mobility derived from geometrical magnetoresistance data, on the other hand, is ≈95 cm²/V^-s; this difference, taken together with the effect of temperature on the transport properties, suggests there is mixed conduction.     

High-efficiency,thin-film InP concentrator solar cells

High-efficiency, thin-film InP solar cells grown heteroepitaxially on GaAs and Si single-crystal bulk substrates are being developed as a means of eliminating the problems associated with using single-crystal InP substrates (e.g., high cost, fragility, high mass density and low thermal conductivity). A novel device structure employing a compositionally graded Ga _x In_1−x As layer (∼8 μm thick) between the bulk substrate and the InP cell layers is used to reduce the dislocation density and improve the minority carrier properties in the InP. The structures are grown in a continuous sequence of steps using computer-controlled atmospheric-pressure metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy (AP-MOVPE). Dislocation densities as low as 3×10⁷ cm⁻² and minority carrier lifetimes as high as 3.3 ns are achieved in the InP layers with this method using both GaAs or Si substrates. Structures prepared in this fashion are also completely free of microcracks. These results represent a substantial improvement in InP layer quality when compared to heteroepitaxial InP prepared using conventional techniques such as thermally cycled growth and post-growth annealing. The present work is concerned with the fabrication and characterization of thin-film InP solar cells designed for operation at high solar concentration (∼100 suns) which have been prepared from similar device structures grown on GaAs substrates. The cell performance is characterized as a function of the air mass zero (AM0) solar concentration ratio (1–100 suns) and operating temperature (25°–80° C). From these data, the temperature coefficients of the cell performance parameters are derived as a function of the concentration ratio. Under concentration, the cells exhibit a dramatic increase in efficiency and an improved temperature coefficient of efficiency. At 25° C, a peak conversion efficiency of 18.9% (71.8 suns, AM0 spectrum) is reported. At 80° C, the peak AM0 efficiency is 15.7% at 75.6 suns. These are the highest efficiencies yet reported for InP heteroepitaxial cells. Approaches for further improving the cell performance are discussed.     

Heavily Doped poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene) Thin Films with High Carrier Mobility Deposited Using Oxidative CVD: Conductivity Stability and Carrier Transport

The transparent conductingpoly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) is of interest for various optoelectronic device applications. Here, the conductivity stability of PEDOT processed using oxidative chemical‐vapor‐deposition (oCVD) with FeCl₃ as an oxidant is primarily dominated by the change in carrier density when aged in air. To establish the mechanism for the conductivity decrease, the changes in carrier density and carrier mobility of PEDOT films are separately monitored using an AC Hall Effect measurement system. The measured electrical properties reveal that a decrease in carrier density dominates the conductivity decrease during annealing. X‐ray diffraction analysis made on the HBr‐ and MeOH‐rinsed PEDOT samples identifies the Fe‐related dedoping phase of Fe(OH)₂ and provides the dedoping mechanism. The carrier transport study demonstrates heavily doped oCVD PEDOT with the carrier density higher than ~10²⁰ cm^–3, and in this regime, an increase in carrier density yields lower carrier mobility which shows that the carrier transport is governed by the ionized impurity scattering mechanism due to increased dopant counter‐anions. These findings of the mechanisms for PEDOT conductivity decrease and carrier transport behavior may be important to organic optoelectronic device applications that show a strong effect of air‐exposure and low‐temperature annealing on the device stability and performance.     

Growth and characterization of indium arsenide thin films

The growth and characterization of indium arsenide films grown on indium phosphide substrates by the metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) process is reported. Either ethyl dimethyl indium or trimethyl indium were found to be suitable in combination with arsine as source compounds. The highest electron mobilities were observed in films nucleated at reduced growth temperature. Scanning electron microscopy studies show that film nucleation at low temperature prevents thermal etch pits from forming on the InP surface before growth proceeds at an elevated temperature. Electron mobilities as high as 21,000 cm²V⁻¹ sec⁻¹ at 300 K were thus obtained for a film only 3.4 μm thick. This mobility is significantly higher than was previously observed in InAs films grown by MOCVD. From the depth dependence of transport properties, we find that in our films electrons are accumulated near the air interface of the film, presumably by positive ions in the native oxide. The mobility is limited by electrons scattering predominantly from ionized impurities at low temperature and from lattice vibrations and dislocations at high temperature. However, scattering from dislocations is greatly reduced in the surface accumulation layer due to screening by a high density of electrons. These dislocations arise from lattice mismatch and interface disorder at the film-substrate interface, preventing these films from obtaining mobility values of bulk indium arsenide.     

Empirical Study of Hall Bars on Few-Layer Graphene on C-Face 4H-SiC

Hall bars were fabricated on epitaxial graphene formed on 4H-SiC{0001} under various growth environments. Subsequently, they were analyzed via electrical characterization, atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman mapping, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) with emphasis on the C-face. The results of the measurement techniques were then corroborated to find correlations. It was found that there is a positive correlation between Hall mobility values and growth pressure in an Ar environment for the C-face. AFM elucidated that topographic features do not correlate with Hall mobility values, nor does device height correlate with carrier concentration. Raman spectroscopy showed that there is a correlation between Hall mobility values and the 2D peak full-width at half-maximum, and a weak correlation with 2D peak position. Additionally, the spectra are sensitive to topographic changes and film discontinuities. Dark-field TEM found higher levels of contrast variation in the SiC〈0001〉 direction, representative of out-of-plane disorder, corresponding to a blue-shift in the 2D peak position. This disorder does not seem to strongly influence Hall mobility values, as it was found in the device with the highest measured Hall mobility: 18,700 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹.     

Frequency bandwidth and conversion loss of a semiconductor heterodyne receiver with phonon cooling of two-dimensional electrons

The temperature and concentration dependences of the frequency bandwidth of terahertz heterodyne AlGaAs/GaAs detectors based on hot electron phenomena with phonon cooling of two-dimensional electrons have been measured by submillimeter spectroscopy with a high time resolution. At a temperature of 4.2 K, the frequency bandwidth at a level of 3 dB (f _{3 dB}) is varied from 150 to 250 MHz with a change in the concentration n _s according to the power law f _3dB ∝ n _s ^−0.5 due to the dominant contribution of piezoelectric phonon scattering. The minimum conversion loss of the semiconductor heterodyne detector is obtained in structures with a high carrier mobility (μ > 3 × 10⁵ cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ at 4.2 K).     

Growth of device quality GaAs by chemical beam epitaxy

The growth of high purity GaAS with excellent uniformity and very low defect density by chemical beam epitaxy using triethylgallium and arsine is described. The residual background impurity is mostly carbon. A mobility of 518 cm²/Vs with a hole density of 3.6 x 10¹⁴ cm⁻³ has been obtained for a growth temperature of 500° C. The electrical quality is further evaluated by fabricating a Si doped epilayer into MESFET device using 1 μm gate length. A transconductance of 177 mS/mm has been measured. The results indicate that chemical beam epitaxy is a very attractive growth technique for GaAs integrated circuits.     

Thermoelectric Power and <Emphasis Type="Italic">ZT</Emphasis> in Conducting Organic Semiconductor

A recent report on poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene-tosylate) (PEDOT.Tos) suggested that the thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) could be enhanced when the percentage oxidation was chemically altered. This invokes the question of whether the carrier density or the mobility was modified. In this work, we analyzed data reported by Bibnova et al. (Nat. Mater. 10, 429, 2011) and extracted the transport parameters using three-dimensional (3D) and two-dimensional (2D) models. Our results indicate that the increase in the power factor (S ² σ) was due primarily to upward extension in the range of thermoelectric power. A changeover from lattice scattering to ionized impurity scattering in PEDOT.Tos allowed the equation governing the thermoelectric power to be valid at higher carrier densities, resulting in an increase in the power factor. ZT was also enhanced in PEDOT.Tos due to the low intrinsic thermal conductivity (~0.37 W/m K). The peak value of ZT (~0.3) was found close to the regime where the semiconductor turned “metallic,” beyond which ZT would decrease. We are of the opinion that charge-to-charge scattering (which normally would lower the power factor in highly doped semiconductors) remain subdued in PEDOT.Tos due potentially to electronic screening and a lack of long-range order. We used the reported data to compute the carrier density and mobility assuming ionized impurity scattering and found the peak power factor to occur for carrier density of ~1 × 10²⁶ m⁻³ and mobility of ~5 × 10⁻⁴ m²/V s.     

Effect of a high-energy proton-irradiation dose on the electron mobility in <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-Si crystals

n-Si single crystals produced by the floating zone method are studied. The concentration of electrons in the crystals is 6 × 10¹³ cm⁻³. The samples are irradiated with 25-MeV protons at 300 K. The irradiation dose is varied in the range (1.8–8.1) × 10¹² cm⁻². The measurements are carried out by means of the Hall technique in the range of temperatures T = 77−300 K. In samples irradiated with different proton doses, a sharp increase in the experimental effective Hall mobility μ_eff or a deep minimum in the dependence μ_eff(T) in the region of phonon scattering of electrons is observed immediately after irradiation or after aging of the samples, respectively. The observed effect is attributed to the formation of high-conductivity (metal-like) inclusions in the irradiated samples and to changes in the degree of screening of the inclusions by impurity-defect shells in relation to the irradiation dose, the time of natural aging, and the temperature of measurements. The impurity-defect shells are formed around metal-like inclusions during isochronal annealing or natural aging of the irradiated samples. It is suggested that metal-like inclusions formed in the n-Si crystals on irradiation with protons with the energy 25 MeV are atomic nanoclusters with an 80-nm radius.     

Simultaneous measurement of carrier density and mobility of organic semiconductors using capacitance techniques

We present a method to measure both the majority carrier density and mobility in organic semiconductors from the voltage and frequency dependence of capacitance (C–V–f). Poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) is used as the prototypical material. The carrier density, and its spatial distribution in a planar device structure, is obtained from a subset of the C–V–f data by conventional capacitance–voltage analysis. We show that the validity of the carrier density extraction depends critically on the measurement frequency. Namely, one should make sure that the measurement frequency is lower than the modified dielectric relaxation frequency, which is characteristically low in organic semiconductors due to their low carrier mobility. Our method further exploits the voltage dependence of the modified dielectric relaxation frequency to measure the conductivity and carrier mobility. This mobility extraction method requires no complex fitting or simulation. Nor does it assume any particular dispersive model of mobility a priori. The carrier density, mobility, and conductivity of P3HT all increase with temperature from 250 to 300 K. The activation energies of mobility and conductivity are 0.15 ± 0.01 and 0.24 ± 0.03 eV, respectively.     

Time of flight experimental studies of CdZnTe radiation detectors

A time of flight technique was used to study the carrier trapping time, τ, and mobility, μ, in CdZnTe (CZT) and CdTe radiation detectors. Carriers were generated near the surface of the detector by a nitrogen-pumped pulsed dye laser with wavelength ∼500 nm. Signals from generated electrons or holes were measured by a fast oscilloscope and analyzed to determine the trapping time and mobility of carriers. Electron mobility was observed to change with temperature from 1200 cm²/Vs to 2400 cm²/Vs between 293 K and 138 K, respectively. Electron mobilities were observed between 900 cm²/Vs and 1350 cm²/Vs at room temperature for various CZT detectors. Electron mobilities in various CdTe detectors at room temperature were observed between 740 cm²/Vs and 1260 cm²/Vs. Average electron mobility was calculated to be 1120 cm²/Vs and 945 cm²/Vs for CZT and CdTe, respectively. Hole mobilities in both CZT and CdTe were found to vary between 27 cm²/Vs and 66 cm²/Vs. Electron trapping times in CZT at room temperature varied from 1.60 μs to 4.18 μs with an average value of about 2.5 μs. Electron trapping time in CdTe at room temperature varied between 1.7 μs and 4.15 μs with an average value of about 3.1 μs.     

Vapor Annealing as a Post-Processing Technique to Control Carrier Concentrations of Bi<Subscript>2</Subscript>Te<Subscript>3</Subscript> Thin Films

This article demonstrates that carrier concentrations in bismuth telluride films can be controlled through annealing in controlled vapor pressures of tellurium. For the bismuth telluride source with a small excess of tellurium, all the films reached a steady state carrier concentration of 4 × 10¹⁹ carriers/cm³ with Seebeck coefficients of −170 μV K⁻¹. For temperatures below 300°C and for film thicknesses of 0.4 μm or less, the rate-limiting step in reaching a steady state for the carrier concentration appeared to be the mass transport of tellurium through the gas phase. At higher temperatures, with the resulting higher pressures of tellurium or for thicker films, it was expected that mass transport through the solid would become rate limiting. The mobility also changed with annealing, but at a rate different from that of the carrier concentration, perhaps as a consequence of the non-equilibrium concentration of defects trapped in the films studied by the low temperature synthesis approach.     

Hole scattering mechanisms in Hg1−xCdxTe

In this paper, we analyze and discuss the roles of nine different scattering mechanisms—ionized impurity, polar and nonpolar optical, acoustic, dislocation, strain field, alloy disorder, neutral impurity, and piezoelectric—in limiting the hole mobilities in p-type Hg_1−xCd_xTe crystals. The analysis is based on obtaining a good fit between theory and experiment for the light and heavy hole drift mobilities by optimizing certain unknown (or at the most vaguely known) material parameters such as the heavy hole mobility effective mass, degree of compensation, and the dislocation and strain field scattering strengths. For theoretical calculations, we have adopted the relaxation time approach, keeping in view its inadequacy for the polar scattering. The energy dispersive hole relaxation times have been drawn from the published literature that take into account the p-symmetry of valence band wave functions. The temperature dependencies of multiple charge states of impurities and of Debye screening length have been taken into account through a numerical calculation for the Fermi energy. Mobility data for the present analysis have been selected from the HgCdTe literature to represent a wide range of material characteristics (x=0.2–0.4, p=3×10¹⁵–1×10¹⁷ cm⁻³ at 77K, μ_peak≅200-1000cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹). While analyzing the light hole mobility, the acoustic deformation and neutral impurity potentials were also treated as adjustable. We conclude that

FABRICATION OF STRAINED-Si CHANNEL P-MOSFET’s ON ULTRA-THIN SiGe VIRTUAL SUBSTRATES

In the ultra-thin relaxed SiGe virtual substrates, a strained-Si channel p-type Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor （p-MOSFET） is presented. Built on strained-Si/240nm relaxed-Si0.8 Ge0.2/ 100nm Low Temperature Si （LT-Si）/10nm S i buffer was grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy （MBE）, in which LT-Si layer is used to release stress of the SiGe layer and made it relaxed. Measurement indicates that the strained-Si p-MOSFET＇s （L=4.2μm） transconductance and the hole mobility are enhanced 30% and 50% respectively, compared with that of conventional bulk-Si. The maximum hole mobility for strained-Si device is 140cm^2/Vs. The device performance is comparable to devices achieved on several μm thick composition graded buffers and relaxed-SiGe layer virtual substrates.     

Study of the laser-recrystallized film with a control of grain boundary location by using surrounding antireflection cap method

A modified technique for unseeded laser-recrystallization of poly-crystalline silicon films deposited on amorphous insulators has been developed whereby grain boundary location in the recrystallized silicon film can be controlled. In this technique, the silicon film is encapsulated with an antireflection cap with windows and then recrystallized by cw-Ar ion laser irradiation. Grain boundaries are removed from the silicon film at the place where the window is opened because of a temperature gradient due to a change in laserbeam absorption in the silicon film. The (100) texture is observed in the grain-boundary-free areas although the silicon shows (110) texture before the recrystallization. An SOI/ MOSFET has been fabricated in the recrystallized film. The channel regions of MOS-FET’s are aligned in the window regions. Field-effect mobility of 490 cm²/Vs is obtained for n-channel MOSFET’s. Source-to-drain leakage current of 5fA/μm is obtained at drain voltage of 5V and back-gate voltage of -100V for the W/L = 10 μ/2 μm MOSFET.