Approximation for the Fermi–Dirac integral with applications to degenerately doped

solar cells and other semiconductor devices

S. T. H. Abidi and S. Noor Mohammad

Citation: Journal of Applied Physics 56, 3341 (1984); doi: 10.1063/1.333860

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 Approximation for the Fermi-Dirac integral with applications to degenerately
doped solar cells and other semiconductor devices
s. T. H. Abidi and S. Noor Mohammad
Solar Photoooitaics and Electrophysics Program, Department ofPhysics and Meteorology, Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India
(Received 3 January 1984; accepted for publication to May 84)
An analytical formula for evaluating Fermi-Dirac integral of order! has been proposed. The
formula exhibits essentially the same form as that of Joyce and Dixon, but is accurate enough to be
used in the heavily doped regions of semiconductor devices as well as in those cases where the
degeneracy occurs at nonequilibrium. It has been shown that the accuracy with which the
derivative can be evaluated by differentiation of the proposed series is remarkable and the error
never exceeds 0.4%. To justify its applicability the formula has been used to calculate the effective
charge carrier concentration of degenerate heavily doped material.

The Fermi-Dirac integral (FDI) of order! defined, in X 10- 4 , a4 = - 4.4256 X 10- 5 •

general, byl
2
F ln (71c)=-
Loo X
ll2
dx , (1)
..[ii 0 1 + exp(x - 71e)
is of fundamental imP""~ .. ~ in the theory of metals and
semiconductors. The '. ~ useful essentially in the de-
scription of concentrfl jlectrons and holes, and indi-
rectly in related prope , ..;h as density of states in the
conduction and valenCt: .1-1S. The Maxwell-Boltzmann
statistics, which reduces Eq.(l) to l
FIll (71e)zeXP(71e)'
suffices for the description of electronic properties only of
the nondegenerate materials. For semiconductors of applied
interest where degeneracy occurs at nonequilibrium, as in
injection in double heterostructure devices, and at equilibri-
um in heavily doped semiconductor regions as in the emitter
of bipolar transistors and solar cells, the carrier concentra-
tions are so high that FDt simplification of the form given in
Eq. (2) is almost forbidden.
The FDI in Eq. (1) can be evaluated only by a numerical
technique. As can be seen from a recent review by Blake-
more, 2 a number of high-precision approximate forms and
numerical tabulations for ue = FI d71e) are already available
in literature. Almost always an approximation is judged by
its simplicity of numerical evaluation and its accuracy. In
practice, however physicists often really do not want merely
the value of the function; rather, they want to manipulate the
function analytically. For example, the function appears in a
differential equation and it must be multiplied by another
function and then integrated. It is ease of this sort of analytic
manipulation that is of prime importance in applied physics.
Most of the published approximations for FDI2 are either
too complicated to be used for analytical manipulation or
involve many short intervals of 71 c in each of which different
expressions are used. Only comparatively recently a series
solution for 71e examined by Joyce and Dixon3 has appeared
with much promise. The series is given by
The average percent error
J3.1J
lOO[1Je(ca1culated) -71e(exact)]
= -..!:...:.~-----.:...-:..;:..;...---=-
1Je(exact)
and
100[ue(calculated) - ue(exact)]
J3.u = .
ue(exact)
corresponding to Eq. (3) are listed in Table I. It can be seen
from the table that .J 71 and .J u increase monotonically in the
negativedirection. .d1J = - 5.9for71c = 10andue = 24.08.
(2)
This indicates that Eq. (3) is simply unacceptable for highly
degenerate semiconductors at nonequilibrium.
As an alternative to Eq. (3) we propose a relation given
by
71e = /3In Ue + bo+ blUe + b2U~ + b3U~ + b4 u: ... , (4)
/3 = 0.9985, bo = - 1.048 X 10-4, b l = 35.46250X 10- 2 ,
b2 = - 4.958417X 10- 3 , b 3 = 1.199012 X to- 4 ,
6
b4 = - 1.532784 X 10- •
Very high accuracy of the results obtained from Eq. (4) is
apparent from Table 1. The variation of .JILl = We (calcula-
ted) - We (exact), where We = du c /d71e, with 71e is shown in
Fig. 1. The curve exhibits a maximum, .Jw = 4x 10- 3 ,
around 71e = 5 and.dw = 0.1 X 1O- s at 71e = to. Thus we
see that Eq. (4) is a more accurate approximation to the FDI
than other approximations published so far. 2 The series giv-
en by Eq. (4) can be easily manipulated analytically and can
be used even in those regions of semiconductor devices
where the Joyce-Dixon series gives a very large error.
Equation (4) can be used to calculate the effective
charge concentration in highly degenerate semiconductors.
For such materials the charge screening constant4 as<: and
the Einstein equation5 relating the diffusion coefficient Dc
and mobility J.Le are given by
(5)

71e = 1n ue + a1u c + a2u~ + a3u~ + a4u: + ... , (3)

with a l = 0.35355, a2 = - 4.9501 X 10- 3 , a3 = 1.4839 where

3341 J. AppI. Phys. 56 (11). 1 December 1984 0021-8979/84/233341-03$02.40 @ 1984 American Institute of Physics 3341
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 TABLE I. Average percentage error in the calculated values of "Ie and U e. Each entry is followed by its exponent to the base 10.

.Ii "I .liu

I Joyce & Dixon I
"Ie Present Joyce & Dixon Present

0.1 0.2100( - 2) 0.1062(0) 0.1633( - 4) 0.8260( - 3)

0.3 - 0.2976( - 2) 0.8633( - 3) - 0.2204( - 4) 0.6484( - 5)
0.6 0.8885( - 2) - 0.5748( - 2) 0.6298( - 4) - 0.4075( - 4)
1.0 - 0.4600( - 2) - 0.1975( - I) - 0.2998( - 4) - 0.1287( - 3)
1.5 0.1300( - 2) - 0.8433( - 2) 0.7572( - 5) - 0.4912( - 4)
2.0 - 0.2095( - 2) - 0.6815( - 2) - 1.0860( - 5) - 0.3534( - 4)
2.5 - 0.2288( - 2) - 0.4340( - 2) - 0.2247( - 4) - 0.2877( - 4)
3.0 - 0.5440( - 2) - 0.6963( - 2) - 0.2247( - 4) - 0.2877( - 4)
3.5 - 0.1440( - I) - 0.1555( - 1) - 0.5354( - 4) - 0.5777( - 4)
4.0 - 0.2899( - I) - 0.2591( - I) - 0.9749( - 4) - 0.8709( - 4)
4.4 - 0.4845( - I) - 0.3514( - 1) -0.1512(-3) - 0.1095( - 3)
5.0 - 0.9979( - I) - 0.4921( - 1) - 0.2809( - 3) - 0.1378( - 3)
5.4 - 0.1558( + 0) - 0.5725( - 1) - 0.4120( - 3) - 0.1500( - 3)
6.0 - 0.2871( + 0) -0.6297( -1) - 0.6979( - 3) - 0.1502( - 3)
6.4 - 0.4263( + 0) - 0.6933( - 1) - 0.9870( - 3) - 0.1559( - 3)
7.0 - 0.7224( + 0) - 0.6359( - 1) - 0.1573( - 2) - 0.1315( - 3)
7.4 - 0.1000( + I) - 0.5173( - 1) - 0.2111( - 2) - 0.1015( - 3)
8.0 -0.1588( + 1) - 0.3358( - 1) - 0.3257( - 2) - 0.6117( - 4)
8.4 - 0.2118( + 1) -0.1822( -I) - 0.4326( - 2) - 0.3167( - 4)
9.0 -0.3182( + I) 0.1112( - 2) - 0.6653( - 2) 0.1811( - 5)
9.4 - 0.4109( + I) 0.8583( - 2) - 0.8968( - 2) 0.1343( - 4)
10.0 - 0.5906( + I) - 0.1000( - 4) -0.1464(-1) - 0.1481( -7)

(6)
~= kT (uJdU c )
flc e d'TJc
(7)
= kT(l + L Vbvu;). (8)
e v= \

In Eqs. (6H8), e is the carrier charge, €o the dielectric

24 16 I
I
,, constant, k the Boltzmann constant, T the absolute tempera-
I I ture, h the Planck constant, and N" the effective density of
I
I
I states. The carrier concentration nt:. ; in general, is given by
I
I I
I
(9)
20 12 I
I I
,J I
I
Equations (5H9) give

I
I I n =~~~. (10)
I
I c kT fle ..tea;"
16 B I I
~
Joyce l!. Dixon_I I For electrons in the conduction band and for holes in the
S! I
x I I valence band the subscript C of various quantities would cor-
~ I I
<l I I respond to e and v, respectively. Then the effective carrier
4 /
I concentration is given by

B 0
1L:v I
I
I
I
I

where
n i, = n,n u = d\d-rJ3N ,Nu , (11)

Joyce 6. Dlxon----..j
I D,Dv
I d\=--,
-2
1-0 20 )0 ,.. 0 5-0 6-0
fl,llv
7-0/
1"[c
I
I and
I
I
I
I
I
I
/'"
_---,.",~ /present
o When expressed in terms ofequHibrium concentrations neO
and nvO , of the undoped material of band-gap Ego, the same
a-a 1'0 :CO 31J [;0 5'0 G-O 7'0 S-O 9"0 10'0 quantity would be
1"[c
n~ = N,Nv exp{ - EgolkT). (12)
FIG. I. Error .liw involved in We = dUcld"le plotted against "Ie using Eqs..
(3) and (4). Equations (11) and (12) give

J. Appl. Phys., Vol. 56,inNo. S. T. H_ Abidi and S. N. Mohammad 3342

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Equation (13) is the general equation for effective carrier
concentration of high injected material which is degenerate.
In case of nondegenerate materials, Eq. (13) reduces to
n~ = n~ exp(.:iEg/kT),
in which..1Eg is the band-gap narrowing due to high-impuri-
ty concentration. Equation (14) is identical to one derived by
(13) Slotboom and de Gra.a.tr' and independently by de Mann7
from other considerations.
I J. S. Blakemore, Semiconductor Statistics (Pergamon, New York, 1962).
2J. S. Blakemore, Solid-State Electron. 25, 1067 (1982).
3W. B. JoyceandR. W. Dixon, Appl. Pbys. Lett. 31, 354(1977); ibid. 32, 680
(1978).
4H. P. D. Lanyon and R. A. Tuft, IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices ED-26,
(14) 1014 (1979).
sH. Kroemer, IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices ED-25, 850 (1978).
6J. W. Siotboom and H. C. de Graatf, Solid-State Electron. 19,857 (1976).
7H. J. J. De Mann, IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices ED-18, 833 (1971).

3343 J. Appl. Phys .• Vol. 56, No. 11 , 1 December 1984 S. T. H. Abidi and S. N. Mohammad 3343
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