Chromium doping of wide band-gap 111-V semiconductors is known to produce semiinsulating
material by compensation of residual shallow donors. Despite the great
technological importance of Cr-doped 111-V compounds as substrates for device
fabrication the physical nature of the Cr centers controlling the electrical properties
in certain materials is still subject of investigation. Thus, in contrast to what
happens in GaAs and InP the behavior of Cr in gallium phosphide is very poorly
understood I l l . The location of the chromium-related energy levels within band gap
is extremely unclear 12, 31 and the theoretically predicted positions differ from the
experimentally determined ones 141. Several methods like DLTS, photocapacitance,
photo-ESR, photoluminescence (PL) , and photoconductivity (PC) (a detailed review is
given in /I/) have been employed for the determination of the position of Cr centers
in Gap.
The aim of the present note is to investigate the position of the Cr levels in
semi-insulating Gap. For this purpose we have used p-type samples with room
temperature resistivity greater than 10 Qcm, that is the Fermi level lies about 0.8 to
1 eV above the valence band, and studied the material impurity photoconductivity.
In addition, the diffusion photocurrent under continuous and chopped extrinsic
(impurity) illumination has been investigated in order to determine the photoinduced
transitions between the bands and the Cr levels. It must be mentioned that all
measurements were performed at room temperature.
It is well known that chromium introduces three levels in Gap, two acceptors and
a donor one. In the case of semi-insulating material, where the Fermi level lies close
to midgap, only the two acceptor levels are observed 131. Thus under extrinsic
illumination valence band electrons can be excited into the Cr single and double
acceptors and photoconductivity is carried mainly by excess holes. Therefore the
impurity PC is expected to show two thresholds, one for each level.