The electrical characteristics of Pb1-xEuxSe homojunctions.

The current mechanism of Pbsub1-xEusubxSe diodes prepared by the MBE techique was studied by measuring Rsub0A of diodes with five different europium contents as a function of temperature. Good agreement was obtained between theoretical results and experimental data at high temperatures. At low temperatures, Rsub0A is not dominated by band-to-band tunnelling, but by excess tunnelling. At present, we favour the explanation of trap-assisted tunnelling since Rsub0A is an exponential function of the energy gap. From the theoretical model, a minority carrier lifetime of the order of a nanosecond was derived.