Electronic transport in two dimensional Si:P $\delta$-doped layers

TL;DR

This paper theoretically studies 2D electronic transport in Si:P delta-doped layers, revealing unique non-monotonic mobility behavior and differences from Si-MOSFETs, with implications for understanding dopant scattering effects.

Contribution

It provides a novel theoretical analysis of density-dependent mobility in Si:P delta-doped layers, highlighting contrasting behavior with Si-MOSFETs and exploring the roles of screening and layer width.

Findings

Mobility decreases then increases with density, opposite to Si-MOSFETs.

Mobility inversely proportional to density at low densities.

Transport scattering time can be much larger than single-particle relaxation time.

Abstract

We investigate theoretically 2D electronic transport in Si:P $\delta$-doped layers limited by charged-dopant scattering. Since the carrier density is approximately equal to the dopant impurity density, the density dependent transport shows qualitatively different behavior from that of the well-studied 2D Si-MOSFETs where the carrier density is independent of the impurity density. We find that the density dependent mobility of the Si:P system shows non-monotonic behavior which is exactly opposite of the non-monotonicity observed in Si-MOSFETs --- in the Si:P system the mobility first decreases with increasing density and then it increases slowly with increasing density above a typical density $10^{14}$ cm$^{-2}$ (in contrast to Si MOSFETs where the mobility typically increases with density first and then slowly decreases at high density as surface roughness scattering dominates). In the low density limit (or strong screening limit) mobility decreases inversely with increasing density, but in the high density limit (or weak screening limit) it slowly increases due to the finite width effects of the 2D layer. In the intermediate density regime ($1/a < 2 k_F < q_{TF}$, where $a$, $k_F$, and $q_{TF}$ are the confinement width of the $\delta$-layer, Fermi wave vector, and Thomas-Fermi screening wave vector, respectively) the density dependent mobility is approximately a constant at the minimum value. However, the calculated mean free path increase monotonically with density. We also compare the transport scattering time relevant to the mobility and the single particle relaxation time relevant the quantum level broadening, finding that the transport scattering time could be much larger than the single-particle scattering time unlike in Si MOSFETs where they are approximately equal.