Evidence for a contribution to the extrinsic photoconductive signal by hopping through excited states of the donors in silicon and CdTe

The intensities of the bound to bound transitions of the shallow donors in silicon and CdTe are found to be strongly electric field dependent when observed by photoconductivity techniques at low temperatures. Under these conditions significant differences can be detected between the photoconductive spectrum and the same transitions observed in absorption. The photoconductive peaks are shifted consistently to lower frequency compared with the absorption spectrum and additional peaks appear which are not significant features in absorption. These additional peaks are believed to result from the formation of molecular complexes of donors. The strong electric field dependence of the bound transitions observed in photoconductivity, the shift to lower frequency of the peaks and the enhancement of the additional lines can all be explained qualitatively on the assumption that the mechanism responsible for the generation of the photosignal involves hopping between the excited states of the molecular complexes