Electronic transport in semiconductors

The first part of this thesis is a study of thermally activated conduction, Hall effect, and Far-Infrared absorption in n-InP. Accurate measurements of threshold energies are deduced from the temperature dependence of these effects, after correction for Fermi level variations, and it is shown that the threshold for electrical conduction is higher than for Hall effect, or cyclotron resonance. An explanation is given in terms of the long range impurity potential fluctuations. The second part of this thesis presents measurements of the thermopower in heterostructures for the GaInAs - InP, GaInAs - InAlAs, and GaAs - GaAlAs systems, with and without magnetic field, for temperature varying from 2K to 10K. In high magnetic fields, strong oscillations of the thermopower are seen, with the same phase as the Shubnikov - de Haas oscillations in the resistivity, in accordance with theory. The magnitude and temperature dependence of the thermopower are mostly as predicted for the superlattice but those of the heterojunctions disagree with the predictions. A discussion of the cause of this disagreement is given. In the final part, the value of the relative energy shift between different valleys of the conduction band of a thin film of PbTe grown on BaF2 is obtained. This will be used to obtain the deformation potential of PbTe.