Electron radiative recombination

Chief ionization processes Charge transfer Electron impact ionization Penning ionization Chief excitation processes Electron impact excitation Ion-electron radiative recombination... 

CHXNH. Many of the reactions involve radiative association. Dissociative electron-ion recombination then yields neutrals such as CH (methane), C2H OH (ethanol) and CH CN (acetonitrile) [158]. It is often joked... 

There are many ways of increasing tlie equilibrium carrier population of a semiconductor. Most often tliis is done by generating electron-hole pairs as, for instance, in tlie process of absorjition of a photon witli h E. Under reasonable levels of illumination and doping, tlie generation of electron-hole pairs affects primarily the minority carrier density. However, tlie excess population of minority carriers is not stable it gradually disappears tlirough a variety of recombination processes in which an electron in tlie CB fills a hole in a VB. The excess energy E is released as a photon or phonons. The foniier case corresponds to a radiative recombination process, tlie latter to a non-radiative one. The radiative processes only rarely involve direct recombination across tlie gap. Usually, tliis type of process is assisted by shallow defects (impurities). Non-radiative recombination involves a defect-related deep level at which a carrier is trapped first, and a second transition is needed to complete tlie process. 

Light is generated in semiconductors in the process of radiative recombination. In a direct semiconductor, minority carrier population created by injection in a forward biased p-n junction can recombine radiatively, generating photons with energy about equal to E. The recombination process is spontaneous, individual electron-hole recombination events are random and not related to each other. This process is the basis of LEDs [36]. 

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of semiconductor materials showing band gaps where CB and VB represent the conduction band and valence band, respectively and 0 and 0, mobile charge. The height of the curve represents the probabiUty of finding an electron with a given momentum bound to an N-isoelectronic impurity, (a) Direct band gap the conduction band minimum, F, is located where the electrons have 2ero momentum, ie, k = 0. The couples B—B, D—A, B—D, and B—A represent the various routes for radiative recombination. See text, (b) Indirect band gap the conduction band minimum, X, is located...

In LEDs, electrons are generally injected into a type active layer. The internal quantum efficiency, ie, the photons per injected electrons, is given by the radiative recombination rate divided by the total recombination rate ... 

Direct and Indirect Energy Gap. The radiative recombination rate is dramatically affected by the nature of the energy gap, E, of the semiconductor. The energy gap is defined as the difference in energy between the minimum of the conduction band and the maximum of the valence band in momentum, k, space. Eor almost all semiconductors, the maximum of the valence band occurs where holes have zero momentum, k = 0. Direct semiconductors possess a conduction band minimum at the same location, k = O T point, where electrons also have zero momentum as shown in Eigure la. Thus radiative transitions that occur in direct semiconductors satisfy the law of conservation of momentum. 

For a simplified case, one can obtain the rate of CL emission, =ft GI /e, where /is a function containing correction parameters of the CL detection system and that takes into account the fact that not all photons generated in the material are emitted due to optical absorption and internal reflection losses q is the radiative recombination efficiency (or internal quantum efficiency) /(, is the electron-beam current and is the electronic charge. This equation indicates that the rate of CL emission is proportional to q, and from the definition of the latter we conclude that in the observed CL intensity one cannot distii pish between radiative and nonradiative processes in a quantitative manner. One should also note that q depends on various factors, such as temperature, the presence of defects, and the... 

Typical elemental detection limits are listed in Table 1. The detection limit is the concentration that produces the smallest signal that can be distinguished from background emission fluctuations. The continuum background is produced via radiative recombination of electrons and ions e — M+ hv or M + e + e — ... 

The intensity /k, (2 a) of a spectral emission line, i. e. the radiative recombination of an electron of a species A from a higher energy level k to the lower level i, is characteristic of a sputtered element or molecule A and is calculated by use of the equation ... 

Mehl, W. and Funk, B. (1967) Dark injection of electrons and holes and radiative recombination in anthracene with metallic contacts. Phys. Lett. A, 25, 364-365. 

This isomeric form is of interest from an interstellar point of view since the isomer, CH3OH2, is a possible route, via dissociative electron-ion recombination, to the observed methanol.14 A proposed reaction68 leading to this isomer is the radiative association,... 

An approximation of the lifetime in PS at RT using an electron-hole pair density equal to one pair per crystallite and the radiative recombination parameter of bulk silicon give values in the order of 10 ms [Ho3]. The estimated radiative lifetime of excitons is strongly size dependent [Sa4, Hi4, Hi8] and increases from fractions of microseconds to milliseconds, corresponding to an increase in diameter from 1 to 3 nm [Hy2, Ta3], as shown in Fig. 7.18. For larger crystallites a recombination via non-radiative channels is expected to dominate. The experimentally observed stretched exponential decay characteristic of the PL is interpreted as a consequence of the randomness of the porous skeleton structure [Sa5]. 

It should also be briefly recalled that semiconductors can be added to nanocarbons in different ways, such as using sol-gel, hydrothermal, solvothermal and other methods (see Chapter 5). These procedures lead to different sizes and shapes in semiconductor particles resulting in different types of nanocarbon-semiconductor interactions which may significantly influence the electron-transfer charge carrier mobility, and interface states. The latter play a relevant role in introducing radiative paths (carrier-trapped-centers and electron-hole recombination centers), but also in strain-induced band gap modification [72]. These are aspects scarcely studied, particularly in relation to nanocarbon-semiconductor (Ti02) hybrids, but which are a critical element for their rational design. 

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