Contribution to the problem of the influence of the electric field on the conductivity of amorphous semiconductors

The barrier–cluster model applied to chalcogenide glasses

“…The barrier model [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] assumes that an amorphous semiconductor consists of microscopic regions separated from each other by potential barriers. The barriers restrict the transition of low energy conduction electrons from one region to another.…”

“…The cluster model gives us the best arguments for existence of the mentioned micro-regions in chalcogenides. The barrier-cluster model -thanks to the existence of the potential barriers -enables us to explain the wide range of optical and electronic phenomena in non-crystalline semiconductors [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. The barrier model explains the problems with gap-states in chalcogenides, too.…”

An explanation of optical phenomena in non-crystalline semiconductors

“…Such electrons behave between barriers in particular regions of material in a similar way as electrons in a crystal do. The author, to some extent, used this idea already to explain physical properties of non-crystalline semiconductors (see [10][11][12]). …”

“…The potential barriers create conditions for a strong electron-phonon interaction. This may be connected with localization of carriers in the vicinity of zone borders, caused by presence of potential barriers [10][11][12]. At that, the barriers are not stiff but they are subject to temperature motion as they are connected with real physical objects.…”

“…These problems were solved in various studies [11,12,25,31,32]. They concerned ohmical transport in the region of low fields, as well as non-ohmical transport in high electric fields.…”