Carrier Mobility in Semiconductors

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Mobility
Electrons in doped semiconductor that is thermalised at room temperature have a thermal energy which allows
them to wander in any direction. Under thermal equilibrium, elementary statistical mechanics tells us that the
average kinetic energy associated with each electron, is 1/2 k B T , per degree of freedom, and since the electron is
free to wander in 3 dimensions the total kinetic energy is given by

(1)
The electron travels in a straight line until it path is influenced by another atom in the lattice, impurity atom or other
scattering mechanism. The average distance which the electron travels before being scattered is known as the
mean-free path and the average time between collisions is imaginatively called the mean-free time t c . As you might
expect, it depends on the material but typical magnitudes are 10 -5 cm and a few picoseconds, respectively.
If an electric field E is applied across the semiconductor, the free electrons will experience a force F =- qE . In the
opposite direction of the field (since the electron has negative charge). Now the additional component of the electric
field is imposed on the random motion of the electron causing an overall drift in the opposite direction to the electric
field.
By equating the momentum gained by the electron during its mean free flight to the momentum lost in a collision we
can obtain the drift velocity.

(2)

(3)
We call the ratio of the drift velocity to the applied electric field the mobility and it has the units (cm 2 V -1 s -1 ). A
similar argument applies to holes in the valence band, with the result that the mobility is given by (5) where we have
used m h * as the effective mass of the hole.

(4)

(5)
Coming soon
Table 1. Electron and Hole mobilities for various semiconductor materials
Looking at equations (4) and (5) we can see that mobility is directly effected by the mean free time for electrons and
holes which is determined by the various scattering mechanisms. The most important are lattice scattering and
impurity scattering.
Lattice scattering results from the thermal motion of the lattice atoms at temperatures above T= 0 K. The agitation of

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Carrier Mobility in Semiconductors

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http://britneyspears.ac/physics/mobility/mobility.htm

the atoms cause variations in the potential resulting in the emission of phonons which transfer energy between the
lattice and the free carriers. Lattice scattering becomes dominant at higher temperatures because lattice vibrations
increase with increasing temperature. A full theoretical analysis is shows that the mobility due to lattice scattering
varies as T -3/2 .
Impurity scattering results from the ionised donor and acceptor impurities. A passing charge carrier will be deflected
due to the Coulomb force between it and the ion. The probability of impurity scattering depends on the doping
density and the proportion of those atoms that are ionised. Impurity scatting become less significant with
temperature since above a certain temperature, the impurity atoms will have ionised and also the charge carriers
are moving faster and interact with the impurity for a shorter time. The variation mobility due to impurity scattering
decreases as T 3/2 / N T , where N T is the total impurity concentration.
In summary, the total scattering time is the sum of two scatting times, the lattice scatting time t
scattering time t I . Using (4) we can simply obtain (7),

and the impurity

(6)

(7)

References
[1] Ilegems, M., Montgomery, H.C., J. Phys. Chem. Solids 34 (1972) 885.
[2] Ilegems, M., Dingle, R., J. Appl. Phys. 44 (1973) 4234.
[3] Crouch, R.K., Debnam, W.J., Fripp, A.L., J. Mater. Sci. 13 (1978) 2358.
[4] S. M. Sze, Semiconductor Devices Physics and Technology.
Back to semiconductor transport
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