Tunnelling in metal-semiconductor contacts. II. Influence of the electron-phonon interaction

Following the study of the influence of the impurities on the tunnelling in metalsemiconductor contacts (paper I), the theory set up by Caroli et a1 is applied to the effects of electron-phonon interaction.At first, intervalley processes leading to real phonon effects are studied.Excellent agreement with experiment is found regarding the magnitude of this effect in p n diodes, M/n-Ge as well as M/n-GaSb contacts.Then situations where both real and virtual phonon emission occur are investigated.Theoretical phonon lineshapes are found in excellent agreement with experiment.Intravalley processes in M/p-Ge and M/p-Si contacts are also considered and the great variety of phonon lineshapes found in both these experiments is described by the theory in a very satisfactory way.