1/f noise and intermittency due to electron-phonon scattering in semiconductor materials

Abstract

Inspired by the phenomenon of fluorescence intermittency in quantum dots, we introduce small off-states (intermissions) which interrupt the generation-recombination (= g-r) process in a semiconductor material. If the remaining on-states are power-law distributed we obtain an almost pure 1/f spectrum which can be given the form of Hooge's relation. The predicted Hooge coefficient α H combines properties of g-r noise with that of intermission and electron-phonon scattering. We suggest an alternative form of Hooge's relation with a new coefficient relating 1/f noise to the number of atoms involved in the g-r process rather than to the number of conduction electrons. We find also a slight dependence on the age of the semiconductor material and on the observation time. Our results suggest that the off-states originate from phonons due to an unknown mechanism.