Piezoelectric scattering limited mobility characteristics of a degenerate surface layer in compound semiconductors at low lattice temperatures

Abstract

The theory is developed for piezoelectric scattering rate of carriers in a degenerate surface layer under the condition of low temperature when the approximations of the well-known traditional theory are not valid. The scattering rates thus obtained are then used to estimate the zero-field mobility characteristics for the surface layers under similar condition of low temperature. The results for the surface layers in GaAs and ZnO show that when one takes into account either the degeneracy of the carrier ensemble or the finite energy of the phonons or both, the energy dependence of the scattering rates changes significantly from what follows for a non-degenerate ensemble or from the traditional theory, where one makes use of the high-temperature approximation and thus assumes equipartition law for the phonon distribution, and neglects the phonon energy in the energy balance equation of the electron–phonon system. It is observed that the zero-field mobility characteristics that follow from these scattering rates are interesting in that they are quite different from what turns out either for a non-degenerate ensemble or in the high-temperature approximations.