Subband dependent mobilities and carrier saturation mechanisms in thin Si doping layers in GaAs in the high density limit

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Abstract
Shubnikov-de Haas and persistent photoconductivity measurements have been performed as a function of hydrostatic pressure to study the saturation of the free electron concentration and the mobilities of the individual subbands at high doping densities in very thin sheets (2, 5, 10 nm) of silicon donors in MBE GaAs. The samples were grown at very low temperature (400 degrees C) in order to limit dopant diffusion, and silicon concentrations were close to the solubility limit at this temperature. As has been shown previously with spike-doped GaAs(Si), the relative occupancies and the mobilities of the lower subbands are very sensitive to the spreading of the dopant distribution. A routine was developed for the analysis of the Fourier transforms of the complex pattern of Shubnikov-de Haas peaks in order to provide quantitative values for the mobilities of the individual subbands. The results of this analysis are compared with values deduced from the magnetic field dependence of the resistivity and Hall effect. On applying hydrostatic pressures of the order of 15 kbar in the dark, a decrease of the free electron concentration of a factor of two was observed. This was accompanied by an increase in the mobility of all the subbands due to the change in the charge state of the silicon donors in the doping slab. With the two thinnest slabs the mobility at ambient pressure is so low in the i=0 subband that Shubnikov-de Haas peaks from this subband could not be detected at fields up to 15 T, although strong peaks could be observed from the higher order subbands. After illumination of the thinnest sample at high pressure the measured free electron concentration is not restored to the zero pressure value. One possibility is that the missing electrons occupy a localized non-metastable Si state resonant with the conduction band rather than a DX centre. The pressure coefficient of the carrier density yields an extrapolated position for the energy level for the Si localized state of 270+or-10 meV above the Gamma -conduction band edge at ambient pressure.