Effects of Illumination on the Room Temperature Performances of the Bulk of Gallium Antimonide (GaSb) Semiconductor

Abstract

In this study, the effects of illumination on the room temperature performances of the bulk of Gallium Antimonide semiconductor are investigated under different conditions. First, by using the illumination mechanism, the photon absorption rate as function of absorption coefficient and depth below the illuminated surface in the bulk of the semiconductor were determined. Second, using the steady state condition of the free carrier generation-recombination mechanism, the radiative excess carrier lifetime of the free carrier is described in the bulk of semiconductor as function of the depth below the illuminated surface, absorption coefficients and injection levels. Next, the excess carrier lifetime is described at different photon flux density and energy of photons illumination. The obtained result indicates that, photon absorption rate and the free carrier’s generation rate in general decreases with increasing the depth below the illuminated surface. Then, the variation of photo-response of the thick semiconductor is to be in general dominated by high injection levels and high energy of the illumination but, low injection levels and low energy illuminations cannot be detected the photo-response of the deep bulk and it becomes dominant at very high injection level.