Vibrational lifetimes of light
impurities in semiconductors
when experimental data cannot be explained
without the help of theory
Dr. Stefan K. Estreicher
Paul Whitfield Horn Professor
Light
impurities such as hydrogen or oxygen in Si have characteristic local
vibrational modes with frequencies far above the highest allowed crystal mode, the
optical or Γ phonon, around 530 cm-1. The decay of any Si-H
stretch mode above 2000 cm-1 should require at least four crystal
phonons. In other words, once excited, any Si-H stretch mode in Si should have
a very long lifetime. Yet, recent experiments have shown that these lifetimes vary
from 4 to 295 picoseconds. Even worse, fits of the temperature-dependence of
these lifetimes to standard theory implies a six phonon process for the mode
with a 4ps lifetime and a five phonon process for the one with a 295ps
lifetime. This makes no sense at all. In the case of the asymmetric stretch of
oxygen in Si, changes in the O or Si isotope affect the frequency by less than
1% but the vibrational lifetime changes by almost an order of magnitude. In
this talk I will discuss the calculation of vibrational lifetimes and their
temperature dependence from first principles, and show that this is a situation
where the experimental data cannot be explained without the help of theory.
Short Bio
Stefan K. Estreicher received a
Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1982 from the