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Carrier Transport Induced and Controlled by Defects

Semiconductor Physics

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Abstract

With a large density of impurities or other lattice defects, the carrier transport deviates substantially from the classical transport within the band. It is carried within energy ranges (within the bandgap), which are determined by the defect structure. Heavy doping produces predominant defect levels split into two impurity bands. Below a density to permit sufficient tunneling, carrier transport requires excitation into the conduction band; at higher defect density, a diffusive transport within the upper impurity band becomes possible. At further increased defect density, metallic conductivity within the then unsplit impurity band occurs.

In amorphous semiconductors, tunneling-induced carrier transport can take place within the tail of states, which extend from the conduction or valence band into the bandgap. Major carrier transport starts at an energy referred to as the mobility edge. With statistically distributed defects, only some volume elements may become conductive. These volume elements widen at increasing temperature, eventually providing an uninterrupted percolation path through a highly doped or disordered semiconductor with a density-related threshold of conduction.

Conductance in organic semiconductors is governed by static and dynamic disorder. Band conductance in small-molecule crystals shows a decreasing carrier mobility at increased temperature with a power law similar to that of inorganic semiconductors. Small-molecule or polymer semiconductors with dominating static disorder show hopping conductance with a typically low but increasing mobility at higher temperatures.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should, however, depend on the microscopic atomic arrangement and on the coordination (Mott and Kaveh 1985).

  2. 2.

    In highly disordered semiconductors the motion may occur through excited states with greater overlap of their eigenfunctions.

  3. 3.

    In a crystalline structure, k, when closer to the center of the Brilloin zone, represents points in real space farther away from the unit cell; in this case long-range deviation from periodicity becomes important. In contrast, when λ k ≅ 1, the wave number is closer to the boundaries of the Brillouin zone; wheras in real space, the corresponding points are closer to the unit cell and the structure of the amorphous material resembles more that of a crystal.

  4. 4.

    Hopping conduction can also involve small polarons which move by hopping from site to site, ions which hop from interstitial to interstitial site, electrons which hop between soliton-bound states in one-dimensional conductors (acetylene) (Kivelson 1982), or Frenkel excitons in molecularcrystals (see Sect. 5 and references in Böttger and Bryksin 1985).

  5. 5.

    The excited state has essentially ionic charge character.

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  1. 138 Moorings Park Rd., O 301, Naples, FL, 34105, USA

    Karl W. Böer

  2. Institut für Festkörperphysik, EW5-1, Technische Universität Berlin, Hardenbergstr. 36, 10623, Berlin, Germany

    Udo W. Pohl

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Böer, K.W., Pohl, U.W. (2017). Carrier Transport Induced and Controlled by Defects. In: Semiconductor Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06540-3_28-2

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    Carrier Transport Induced and Controlled by Defects
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    04 August 2022

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06540-3_28-5

  2. Carrier Transport Induced and Controlled by Defects
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    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06540-3_28-4

  3. Carrier Transport Induced and Controlled by Defects
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    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06540-3_28-3

  4. Carrier Transport Induced and Controlled by Defects
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    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06540-3_28-2

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    Carrier Transport Induced and Controlled by Defects
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    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06540-3_28-1

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