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Origin of the residual acceptor ground-state splitting in silicon
D Karaiskaj1, G Kirczenow, M L W Thewalt
1Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6.
Physical Review Letters
|February 7, 2003
Abstract:
The residual ground-state splitting of acceptors in high-quality silicon has been studied intensely by different experimental techniques for several decades. Recently, photoluminescence studies of isotopically pure silicon revealed the ground-state splitting to result from the random distribution of isotopes in natural silicon. Here we present a new model that explains these surprising experimental results, and discuss the implications for acceptor ground-state splittings observed in other isotopically mixed semiconductors, as well as for the acceptor ground state in semiconductor alloys.