Scattering mechanisms of the Hall effect and transverse magnetoresistance in nondegenerate piezo-electric semiconductors

Abstract

The Hall effect and transverse magnetoresistance in the intrinsic nondegenerate semiconductors InSb and GaAs have been investigated according to the scattering processes of carriers in solids. These scattering processes include the acoustic phonon scattering, piezo-electric scattering and ionised-impurity scattering. The energy band structure of carriers is assumed to be nonparabolic. Results show that the Hall angle, the Hall coefficient, and the transverse magnetoresistance depend strongly on the DC magnetic field due to the energy-dependent relaxation time. The holes in semiconductors play a major role in the electrical transport phenomenon for the piezo-electric scattering and ionised-impurity scattering, while for the acoustic phonon scattering the conduction electrons in semiconductors play the major role in the electrical transport phenomenon. However, the numerical results for the piezo-electric scattering and ionised-impurity scattering are shown to be rather smaller than those for the acoustic phonon scattering in the intrinsic semiconductors. Therefore, the conduction electrons play a dominant role in the carrier transport phenomenon in the intrinsic semiconductors. A comparison between experimental work and theory for the Hall effect and transverse magnetoresistance in InSb has been made. The effect of nonparabolicity in InSb has also been discussed in comparison with the numerical results for the parabolic band structure.