Three Temperature Model for Nonequilibrium Energy Transfer in Semiconductor Films Irradiated with Short Pulse Lasers

Abstract

This article investigates numerically carrier-phonon interaction and nonequilibrium energy transfer in direct and indirect bandgap semiconductors during sub-picosecond pulse laser irradiation and also examines the recombination effects on energy transport from the microscopic viewpoint. In addition, the influence of laser fluence and pulse duration is studied by using the self-consistent three-temperature model, which involves carriers, longitudinal optical phonons, and acoustic phonons. It is found that a substantial non-equilibrium state exists between carriers and phonons during short pulse laser irradiation because of time scale difference between the relaxation time and the pulse duration. It is clear that the two-peak structure in carrier temperature exists and it depends mainly on laser pulses, fluences, and recombination processes. During laser irradiation, in particular, the Auger recombination for Si becomes dominant due to the increase in the carrier number density, whereas for GaAs, the Auger recombination process can be ignored due to an abrupt increase in SRH recombination rates at the initial stages of laser exposure.