Eur. Phys. J. B (2014) 87: 214
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2014-50487-3

Regular Article

Impurity diffusion in a harmonic potential and nonhomogeneous temperature

¹ School of Chemistry and Physics, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Private Bag X01, Scottsville 3209, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State University, Northridge, California, USA
³ Department of Physics, Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 1176, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

^a e-mail: aragie.berhanu@gmail.com

Received: 17 July 2014
Received in final form: 31 July 2014
Published online: 17 September 2014

Abstract

We propose different ways of manipulating the dispersion of impurities along a semiconductor layer during heat treatment. The impurities undergo a random walk assisted by a nonlinear harmonic potential and nonhomogeneous temperature. Depending on the strength of a hot spot, trap potential, impurity density and standard deviation of the hot spot, the impurities diffuse away from the central region and pile up around the peripheral region of the semiconductor layer. Furthermore, the numerical result depicts that the internal field at high doping level can be of sufficient strength to cause the broadening of the impurity profile.