Transport and Deformation-Potential Theory for Many-Valley Semiconductors with Anisotropic Scattering

Abstract

A transport theory which allows for anisotropy in the scattering processes is developed for semiconductors with multiple nondegenerate band edge points. It is found that the main effects of scattering on the distribution function over each ellipsoidal constant-energy surface can be described by a set of three relaxation times, one for each principal direction; these are the principal components of an energy-dependent relaxation-time tensor. This approximate solution can be used if all scattering processes either conserve energy or randomize velocities. Expressions for mobility, Hall effect, low- and high-field magnetoresistance, piezoresistance, and high-frequency dielectric constant are derived in terms of the relaxation-time tensor. For static-field transport properties the effect of anisotropic scattering is merely to weight each component of the effective-mass tensor, as it appears in the usual theory, with the reciprocal of the corresponding component of the relaxation-time tensor.The deformation-potential method of Bardeen and Shockley is generalized to include scattering by transverse as well as longitudinal acoustic modes. This generalized theory is used to calculate the acoustic contributions to the components of the relaxation-time tensor in terms of the effective masses, elastic constants, and a set of deformation-potential constants. For $n$ silicon and $n$ germanium, one of the two deformation-potential constants can be obtained from piezoresistance data. The other one can at present only be roughly estimated, e.g., from the anisotropy of magnetoresistance. Insertion of these constants into the theory yields a value for the acoustic mobility of $n$ germanium which is in reasonable agreement with observation; a more accurate check of the theory may be possible when better input data are available. For $n$ silicon, available data do not suffice for a check of the theory.