Deconvolution of temperature dependence of conductivity, its reduced activation energy, and Hall-effect data for analysing impurity conduction in n-ZnSe

The temperature dependence of the reduced activation energy w = ε/kBT of the conductivity σ has been utilised for determining the impurity conduction mechanism in doped semiconductors in many studies. Herein, the formula for deconvoluting w when plural conduction mechanisms appear is used to confirm the analysis of the data of the Hall-effect measurements on Al-doped n-ZnSe samples. The analysis is performed on the basis of an impurity-Hubbard-band model which includes ε2 conduction in the top Hubbard band as well as ε3 and Efros-Shklovskii (ES) variable-range hopping (VRH) conduction processes in the bottom Hubbard band. As the result of the analysis, transitions among the three hopping conduction mechanisms of ε2, ε3, and ES VRH are clearly shown in the temperature dependence of w as well as in that of the Hall mobility, which are hardly noticed in the temperature dependence of σ. In addition, the power-law exponent of the prefactor of ES VRH conductivity is determined through the fit to the temperature dependence of w to show that it decreases from ∼ 1.5 to ∼ 0 with increasing net donor concentration.