The mechanism of electrical conduction in glassy semiconductors

Abstract

We argue that the dominant charge carrier in glassy semiconducting alloys is a compound particle in the form of an electron or hole bound to an intimate pair of topological lattice defects; the particle is similar to the polaron solution of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Hamiltonian. The spatial component of the density of states for these special polarons is determined by the length scale of spatial modulation of electronegativity caused by a separate set of standalone topological defects. The latter length scale is fixed by the cooperativity size for structural relaxation; the size is largely independent of temperature in the glass but above melting, it decreases with temperature. Thus we predict that the temperature dependence of the electrical conductivity should exhibit a jump in the slope near the glass transition; the size of the jump is predicted to increase with the fragility of the melt. The predicted values of the jump and of the conductivity itself are consistent with experiment.