Abstract
For large enough electric fields, the emission of carriers from a deep level in a semiconductor is dominated by a tunneling mechanism. This mechanism is very sensitive to the parameters S and h/ω describing the interaction of the deep level with vibronic modes of the lattice. A best‐fit method is used to yield agreement between the theoretical and experimental dependence of the emission rate on electric field and temperature. This is done for levels E3 and EL2 (’’O’’ level) in GaAs and for the ZnO center in GaP. The best‐fit values obtained for S and h/ω are found to be consistent with other estimates deduced independently from photocapacitance, luminescence, and electron capture cross section measurements.