Photothermal investigation of transport in semiconductors: Theory and experiment

The photothermal deflection technique has been extended as a contactless, in situ method to investigate transport in solids with an emphasis on semiconductors. A theoretical model is developed which quantitatively describes the transport behavior, and is shown to be in excellent agreement with experimental results. For semiconductors, this approach yields the thermal diffusivity, the electronic diffusivity, the minority-carrier lifetime and the surface recombination velocity.