Thermoelectric Power of Hot Carriers

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Abstract
Measurements made at room temperature of the thermoelectric effect of hot carriers in n‐ and p‐type germanium excited by the application of strong 2.85‐Gc/sec microwave fields have been analyzed by applying the usual theory of thermoelectric power to the case of hot carriers. The carrier temperature Te and the energy relaxation time τe have been calculated from the data. For the carrier temperature equal to the lattice temperature (T0=300°K) the energy relaxation time for pure n‐type germanium was 13.4×10−12 sec, while that for pure p‐type germanium was 4.9×10−12 sec. In both cases τe fell with rising carrier temperature, to about 0.55×10−12 sec for the n‐type germanium for Te>3T0 and to about 0.4×10−12 sec for the p‐type germanium sample at Te=2.5T0. In both cases there were oscillations in the curves of energy relaxation time vs carrier temperature and ratio of energy relaxation time to momentum relaxation time vs carrier temperature. An explanation of this effect is based on energy loss via optical modes.

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