Diffusion of nonequilibrium carriers in low-dimensional structures

Abstract

The spatial distribution of nonequilibrium carriers generated by a partial illumination of one- and two-dimensional structures was analyzed theoretically. Due to weak electron screening, the carrier distribution in low-dimensional systems has distinct new features. For monopolar excitation, the concentration of nonequilibrium carriers decreases inside the dark regions hyperbolically in two-dimensional and logarithmically in one-dimensional structures, which results in monopolar injection, barely observable in bulk samples. Bipolar diffusion also differs markedly from that in bulk samples; in particular, there is a long-range hyperbolic tail in the majority carrier distribution, which can be either positive or negative, depending on the mobility ratio of majority and minority carriers.