Photoelectric Emission and Contact Potentials of Semiconductors

Abstract
In spherical photo-tubes with interchangeable emitters, energy distributions of external photoelectrons from the semiconductors, Te, Ge, and B, were compared with those of several metals. Contact potentials were determined from the saturation points of current-voltage characteristics. For the semiconductors, as contrasted with metals of the same work function, there was a pronounced sparsity of electrons with energies near the Einstein maximum. In general form, the distributions could be described by the expression, N(ν,E)dEq(ν)E(hνϕδE)mdE

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