Past exam of the chemistry A course of the University of Cambridge / 2022 / Paper 2 / A10 / c

Gallium has three valence electrons, one fewer than silicon, and acts as an acceptor impurity. A neutral acceptor can be described as a negatively charged centre binding an electron hole. Thermal release of these holes gives a p-type semiconductor.

At low temperature, the bound hole can absorb far-IR photons in transitions between acceptor levels. The simplest scalar hydrogenic acceptor state model predictsso one expects a discrete bound-hole absorption series followed by a photoionization continuum. In that idealization, the first lines would be at $3R_A^{\ast }/4$, $8R_A^{\ast }/9$ and $15R_A^{\ast }/16$, with threshold $R_A^{\ast }$.

The hole effective mass is not supplied, so the electron mass $0.2m_e$ cannot be reused to give numerical Ga line positions. In a real valence band, multiple hole bands, anisotropic masses and spin-orbit effects can split and complicate the series; acceptor spectra are generally less accurately described by one scalar hydrogenic ladder.^[ref]