MEASUREMENT OF THE EFFECTIVE TEMPERATURE OF MAJORITY CARRIERS UNDER INJECTION OF HOT MINORITY-CARRIERS IN HETEROSTRUCTURES

We propose and demonstrate a purely electrical method for measuring the effective temperature T(e) of majority carriers under the injection of hot minority carriers. The T(e) of holes in a thin p-type InGaAs layer, heated by electron injection from an InAlAs layer in a three-terminal lattice-matched heterostructure, was determined by measuring the thermionic emission current of holes over another specially designed InGaAs/InAlAs barrier. At T = 77 K, we observed an overheating T(e) - T of over 50 K, even at moderate injection power levels.