High field transport in p type PbTe

Abstract

Theoretical current-field curves for p type PbTe at 300 K have been derived taking into account the intervalley transfer of holes between the principal and secondary valence bands. Two models of charge carrier scattering in PbTe extant in the literature have been considered; one in which scattering is by acoustic phonons only, and the other in which polar optical phonon scattering is also present. The predicted high field behaviours of these two models are markedly different, and comparison of these results with measurements on dendritic crystals of p type PbTe lends strong support to the mixed scattering model.