Electrical Properties of Quench-Deposited Amorphous SnTe Films

Abstract

Hall coefficient and electrical resistivity were measured on amorphous SnTe films by a high input-impedance technique. All the holes responsible for the metallic conduction in the crystalline phase are found to be localized in the amorphous phase, where the valence band mobility edge E_v lies about 0.11 eV below the Fermi level. The mobility gap was estimated to be about 0.58 eV. The Hall mobility of the nonlocalized holes near E_v is about four orders of magnitude smaller than that in the crystalline phase, suggesting a strongly disordered nature of the amorphous phase.