Contribution of light holes to the Hall effect for the complex valence band in germanium and its dependence on doping level

A method is proposed and implemented for experimentally isolating the influence of light holes on the classical Hall effect for the complex valence band in p-Ge. In this method the contribution from light holes is successively eliminated by an applied magnetic field, and then the absolute values of the hole concentrations are calibrated in pairs of samples specially prepared using neutron transmutation doping. The increase in electron concentration as a result of neutron transmutation doping is measured for one of the samples (the reference), while the hole concentration is measured for the other sample. This gives calibration curves for the effective Hall factor in p-Ge, which can be used to precisely measure the hole concentration over the entire range of doping levels. The use of this method for investigating the hopping transport of charge carriers and metal-insulator transitions is illustrated. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.