2023/05/04 by Esho, Iretomiwa, Minnich, Austin J. · 1 citation
#FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2305.03159
The semiconductor BAs has drawn significant interest due to experimental reports of simultaneous high thermal conductivity and ambipolar charge mobility. The ab~initio prediction of high electron and hole mobility assumed the dominance of charge carrier scattering by one phonon. Recently, higher-order electron-phonon scattering processes in polar and non-polar semiconductors have been reported to have a non-negligible impact on charge transport properties, suggesting they may play a role in BAs as well. Here, we report an ab~initio study of two-phonon electron and hole scattering processes in BAs. We find that inclusion of these higher-order processes reduces the computed room temperature electron and hole mobility in BAs by around 40% from the one-phonon value, resulting in an underestimate of experimental values by a similar percentage. We suggest an experimental approach to test these predictions using luminescence spectroscopy that is applicable to the defective samples which are presently available.