First report on effect of freezing of charge carriers on conductivity of CoxZn1−xS ternary semiconductor compounds at low temperatures

Abstract

Polycrystalline ternary semiconductor compounds with the compositional formula CoxZn1−xS (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.1) samples have been synthesized by a controlled co-precipitation technique. The samples are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) method. DC conductivity studies were performed in the temperature region 77–300 K. The dc conductivity plots show the Arrhenius behavior with three different activation energies (Ea) in three different temperature regions I (300–165 K), II (165–100 K), III (100–77 K), and they exhibited the variable range hopping conduction (VRH) mechanism at low temperature region (100–77 K).