The Thermal Conduction in II-VI Semiconductors

Abstract

Thermal conductivity is fundamental transport property that is commonly used to characterize a broad range of material. Knowledge of thermal conductivity of semiconductors forms an important part in the design of power-dissipating devices, such as diodes, transistors and optoelectronic devices. Most of II-VI materials are direct band gap semiconductors[1, 2] with high optical abruption and emission coefficients. These semiconductors covers the infrared to ultraviolet range could be the basis for a variety of efficient light emitting devices spanning the entire range of visible spectrum. A useful description of theoretical and practical aspects of the thermal conductivity in semiconductors is given by many authors[3, 4, 5, 6].

In our investigation by using the many body double time temperature dependent  phonon Green's function theory the contribution to the relaxation times via phonon and electron linewidths for various scattering processes have been estimated to reported the thermal transport in semiconductors. The lattice thermal conductivity of four compounds from II-VI semiconductors group has been analyzed with the help of modified Callaway model and a fairly good agreement between theory and experimental has been observed.