Photo-thermoelectric properties and their use in study of transport properties of both carriers from a single bulk sample

Abstract

We describe a theory on photo-thermoelectric properties of a semiconductor, which include photo-conductivity, photo-Seebeck coefficient, and photo-Hall effect. We demonstrate that these properties provide a powerful tool for the study of carrier transport in semiconductors. Even though photo-carrier generation is a complicated process which often prohibits quantitative analysis as their species or numbers are not known. Using bulk samples seems even less likely as the photo-carrier only affect a thin layer. Our method will allow researchers to bypass these difficulties, to use only measured properties and determine both electron and hole mobilities as well as the ratio between electrons and holes from a bulk sample. We provide initial experiment verification of our theory in the end using two distinctively different semiconductors.