Electrical transport mechanism in the conduction band of gallium antimonide studied from Hall-mobility and transverse-magnetoresistance measurements

Hall-mobility and transverse-magnetoresistance measurements have been made on tellurium-doped n-GaSb from 77 to 300^∘{}K. Samples with carrier concentration of 1.5 ×{} 10¹⁸ and 0.8 ×{} 10¹⁷ cm^-3 were investigated. The results have been explained by the presence of an impurity level associated with the L minima. The activation energy of the impurity level in the more heavily doped samples has been found to be 6±{}1 meV, while analysis of measurements on the lightly doped samples indicates that the activation energy should not be more than 25 meV, thus giving an average value of ED=12.5 meV. Ionized-impurity scattering alone has been shown to be important in the Γ band. In the L band, there are significant contributions from ionized-impurity, acoustical, and equivalent intervalley and polar-optical-phonon scatterings near 300^∘{}K, the first one taking the lead over the others as the temperature goes down.