Hole transport and phonon scattering in epitaxial PbSe films

The combined characterizations of mobility and phonon scattering spectra allow us to probe hole transport process in epitaxial PbSe crystalline films grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The measurements of Hall effect show p-type conductivity of PbSe epitaxial films. At 295 K, the PbSe samples display hole concentrations of (5∼8)×1017 cm−3 with mobilities of about 300 cm2/(V·s), and at 77 K the hole mobility is as high as 3×103 cm2/(V·s). Five scattering mechanisms limiting hole mobilities are theoretically analyzed. The calculations and Raman scattering measurements show that, in the temperatures between 200 and 295 K, the scattering of polar optical phonon modes dominates the impact on the observed hole mobility in the epitaxial PbSe films. Raman spectra characterization observed strong optical phonon scatterings at high temperature in the PbSe epitaxial films, which is consistent with the result of the measured hole mobility.