Measurement of the Lifetime of Minority Carriers in Germanium

Abstract

Two methods are described for the measurement of lifetime of minority carriers. One depends on pulse injection of carriers in a filament and detection, after a known time, at a collector. The second makes use of the decay of the conductivity modulation caused by minority carriers after injection at a single contact. Both measure the lifetime in a small region rather than the average value over a large part of the sample.