Effect of degenerate carriers on Si band gap narrowing

Abstract

Various mechanisms causing band gap narrowing in strongly heated silicon are considered. In the high-temperature region, it becomes necessary to use Fermi–Dirac quantum statistics to describe carriers, since the silicon chemical potential appears in the valence band and in the conduction band at high carrier concentrations. It is shown that carrier degeneracy under conditions of sufficiently strong heating of intrinsic semiconductor causes strong band gap narrowing. The obtained values of band gap narrowing are compared to experimental results.