Determination of Ionization Rates in the Principal Crystallographic Directions in Silicon.

摘要

Measurements of the electron and hole multiplication in silicon p-n junctions and the associated electron and hole ionization rates are presented for the three principal directions , , and . It is shown that published ionization threshold energies are inconsistent with the experimental data. The inconsistency is traced to the fact that the appropriate non-colinear wave vector constructions for conserving crystal momentum in the ionizing collision process were not considered in the previous threshold calculations. An approximate solution to collisions with non-colinear wave vectors is presented that shows qualitative agreement with the experimental observations. (Author)