Non‐normalizability of the hot electron distribution function for piezoelectric scattering

Abstract

Piezoelectric semiconductors have recently gained a new importance due to the various kinds of acousto-electric instabilities associated with them at high electric fields (1) thus lending significance to the study of the distribution function before the onset of these instabilities. Laikhtman (2) first derived an expression for the distribution function of electrons in a parabolic conduction band assuming the piezoelectric mode of electron-lattice interaction to be the only scattering mechanism.The expression obtained by him can be written a s follows:where C is the electron energy, -. A(E,TWe, however, wish to point out in the present communication that the distribution function given by equation (1) is inherently unstable at all electric fields, i.e. for 1 physica (b)