Local Electron Interaction with Point Defects in Sphalerite Zinc Selenide: Calculation from First Principles

Abstract

The present article deals with the description of electron scattering on the different types of point defects in zinc blende ZnSe on the basis of short-range principles. The electron interaction with polar and nonpolar optical phonons, piezoelectric and acoustic phonons, neutral and ionized impurities and static strain centers is considered. The electron transition probabilities and, respectively, the kinetic coefficients in zinc selenide, were calculated using the numerical eigenfunction and self-consistent potential obtained within the ab initio density functional theory. The latter were evaluated using the projector augmented waves formalism as implemented in the ABINIT software suite. We investigated ZnSe samples with defect concentration 4.7 × 1015–1.08 × 1017 cm−3 , then calculated temperature dependencies of electron mobility and Hall factors in the range of 20–400 K. It is shown that the theoretical curves obtained in the framework of short-range scattering models much better coincide with experimental data than the curves calculated on the basis of long-range scattering models.