Electron-electron interactions, coupled plasmon-phonon modes, and mobility in n-type GaAs

TL;DR

This study models electron mobility in n-type GaAs considering electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions, revealing that coupled plasmon-phonon modes significantly influence scattering and mobility, especially at low temperatures and densities.

Contribution

It provides an exact solution to the Boltzmann equation including dynamic screening and mode coupling effects, improving understanding of scattering mechanisms in GaAs.

Findings

Dynamic screening and plasmon-phonon coupling modify inelastic scattering at low temperatures.

Electron-electron scattering reduces mobility, aligning better with experimental data.

Inelastic electron-phonon scattering dominates at 77 K in the absence of impurities.

Abstract

This paper investigates the mobility of electrons scattering from the coupled system of electrons and longitudinal optical (LO) phonons in n-type GaAs. The Boltzmann equation is solved exactly for low electric fields by an iterative method, including electron-electron and electron-LO phonon scattering dynamically screened in the random-phase-approximation (RPA). The LO phonon self-energy is treated in the plasmon-pole approximation. Scattering from ionized impurities screened in static RPA is calculated with phase-shift cross sections, and scattering from RPA screened deformation potential and piezoelectric acoustic phonons is included in the elastic approximation. The results show that dynamic screening and plasmon-phonon coupling significantly modify inelastic scattering at low temperatures and densities. The effect on mobility is obscured by ionized impurity scattering in conventionally doped material, but should be important in modulation doped structures. For uncompensated bulk n-type GaAs, the RPA phase-shift model for electron-impurity scattering gives lower drift mobilities than the standard Thomas-Fermi or Born calculations which are high compared to experiment. Electron-electron scattering lowers the mobility further, giving improved agreement with experiment though discrepancies persist at high donor concentrations ($n>10^{18}{\rm cm}^{-3}$). When impurities are ignored, inelastic scattering from the coupled electron-phonon system is the strongest scattering mechanism at 77 K for moderate doping. This result differs from the standard model neglecting mode coupling and electron-electron scattering which has the acoustic modes dominant in this regime.