Tunnelling in metal-semiconductor contacts. II. Influence of the electron-phonon interaction

For pt.I see abstr. A38891 of 1973. Following the study of the influence of the impurities on the tunnelling in metal-semiconductor contacts, the theory set up by Caroli et al. (1971) is applied to the effects of electron-phonon interaction. At first, intervalley processes leading to real phonon effects are studied. Excellent agreement with experiment is found regarding the magnitude of this effect in p-n diodes, M/n-Ge as well as M/n-GaSb contacts. Then situations where both real and virtual phonon emission occur are investigated. Theoretical phonon lineshapes are found in excellent agreement with experiment. Intravalley processes in M/p-Ge and M/p-Si contacts are also considered and the great variety of phonon lineshapes found in both these experiments is described by the theory in a very satisfactory way.