Eur. Phys. J. B 23, 341-344 (2001)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510170053

Anomalous behavior of the Fermi energy in heavily tin-doped InGaAs

¹ School of Physics and Astronomy, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
² State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2350, USA
³ Lucent Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974, USA

Corresponding author: ^a apalev@post.tau.ac.il

Received: 19 April 2001
Revised: 22 July 2001
Published online: 15 October 2001

Abstract

We have measured the dependence of the Fermi energy on carrier concentration in Sn doped InGaAs at 4.2 K and 300 K. At 4.2 K the Fermi energy was measured by photoluminescence spectroscopy, and at 300 K it was deduced from transport measurements of thermionic emission. In both cases the dependence of the Fermi energy on the mobile electron concentration, measured by Hall effect, strongly deviates from standard theoretical predictions, and the deviation increases with concentration. The most striking observed anomaly is the near saturation of the Fermi level when the Hall concentration exceeds 10¹⁹ cm^-3.