The dominant mechanisms of charge-carrier scattering in lead telluride

The present status of the dominant mechanisms of charge-carrier scattering in lead telluride is analyzed critically. It is shown that the role of the Coulomb potential of the vacancies and the role of the deformation potential of acoustic phonons in carrier scattering in PbTe has been strongly overestimated in most existing studies. Futhermore, the role of optical phonons at high temperatures has been unjustifiably reduced to a polar component only. It is shown that, in addition to this mechanism, the deformation potential due to optical phonons, whose greatest contribution is at high carrier densities, also plays an important role in carrier scattering processes at temperatures in the range of room temperature. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.