On the interaction of the electromagnetic field with heat conducting deformable semiconductors

Abstract

The differential equations and boundary conditions describing the behavior of a finitely deformable, polarizable and magnetizable heat conducting and electrically semiconducting continuum in interaction with the electromagnetic field are derived by means of a systematic application of the laws of continuum physics to a well−defined macroscopic model. The model consists of five suitably defined interpenetrating continua. The relative displacement of the bound electronic continuum with respect to the lattice continuum produces electrical polarization, and electrical conduction results from the motion of the charged free electronic and hole fluids. Since partial pressures are taken to act in the conducting fluids, semiconduction boundary conditions arise, which have not appeared previously. The resulting rather cumbersome system of equations is reduced to that for the quasistatic electric field and static homogeneous magnetic field. In the absence of heat conduction, for the n−type semiconductor, nonlinear equations quadratic in the small field variables, for small fields superposed on a bias, are obtained from the latter, more tractable, system of equations. These small field equations reduce to four equations in four dependent variables. The linear portion of the small field equations is applied in the analysis of the propagation of both plane and surface waves in piezoelectric semiconductors subject to a static biasing electric field. On account of the aforementioned semiconduction boundary condition, the assumption of zero electric surface charge employed in previous treatments of the surface wave problem is not employed here.