Two-phonon scattering in nonpolar semiconductors: A first-principles study of warm electron transport in Si
Abstract
The ab initio theory of charge transport in semiconductors typically employs the lowest-order perturbation theory in which electrons interact with one phonon (1ph). This theory is accepted to be adequate to explain the low-field mobility of nonpolar semiconductors but has not been tested extensively beyond the low-field regime. Here, we report first-principles calculations of the electric field dependence of the electron mobility of Si as described by the warm electron coefficient β. Although the 1ph theory overestimates the low-field mobility by only around 20%, it overestimates β by over a factor of two over a range of temperatures and crystallographic axes. We show that the discrepancy in β is reconciled by the inclusion of on-shell iterated two-phonon (2ph) scattering processes, indicating that scattering from higher-order electron-phonon interactions is non-negligible even in nonpolar semiconductors. Further, a ∼20% underestimate of the low-field mobility with 2ph scattering suggests that nontrivial cancellations may occur in the perturbative expansion of the electron-phonon interaction.
Additional Information
© 2023 American Physical Society. B.H. was supported by a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity under Grant No. 80NSSC21K1280. A.Y.C., P.S.C., and A.J.M. were supported by AFOSR under Grant No. FA9550-19-1-0321. The authors thank J. Sun, S. Sun, D. Catherall, and T. Esho for helpful discussions.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevB.107.L041110.pdf
Supplemental Material - supplemental.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 120043
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230314-846094500.76
- NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship
- 80NSSC21K1280
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
- FA9550-19-1-0321
- Created
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2023-05-17Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-05-17Created from EPrint's last_modified field