Transport phenomena in bipolar semiconductors: a new point of view

Abstract

In previous work it has been shown that the traditional approach to transport phenomena in bipolar semiconductors is inconsistent. In particular, the effect of non-equilibrium charge carriers and appropriate boundary conditions are not considered in the literature. We have proposed an alternative for linear transport but some effects due to the relationship between the fluctuations in the densities of charge carriers and the temperature gradients were not discussed. Here, we continue our criticism to the conventional treatment and extend the previous model to discuss transport phenomena in a linear approximation and boundary conditions as applied to plane interfaces. By the first time charge carriers out of equilibrium, temperature fields, surface and bulk recombination processes, space charge distribution, etc. are undertaken self-consistently. Our model is contrasted with recent experimental results on the Seebeck coefficient of Cd1KxZnxTe.