Experimental evidence for relaxation phenomena in high-purity silicon

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Abstract
Experimental evidence of relaxation phenomena associated with majority-carrier depletion has been observed for the first time in a high-purity semiconductor. It has been demonstrated in the low-temperature current-voltage (J-V) characteristics of a silicon diode. The material changes from the lifetime to the relaxation regime when the temperature is decreased from 300 to 14 K. A change in the shape of the J-V curve, manifested by increased conductance at low bias, is observed and is in good agreement with recent theoretical modeling of minority-carrier behavior in relaxation semiconductors.