Splitting of the ground state of shallow acceptors in silicon

Abstract The results of near infra-red piezo-photoluminescence, photoluminescence excitation, and absorption spectroscopy of silicon doped with Al, Ga, and In performed at 2 K and 0.4 K show that the ground state of these shallow acceptors is split by 0.10 ± 0.01, 0.10 ± 0.01, and 0.015 ± 0.03 cm −1 respectively. This splitting is shown to be a fundamental intrinsic property of shallow acceptors and it may be explained by a dynamic Jahn-Teller effect.