A definition in semiconductor physics, carrier lifetime is defined as the average time it takes for a minority carrier to recombine. The process through which this is done is typically known as minority carrier recombination.
The energy released due to recombination can be either thermal, thereby heating up the semiconductor (thermal recombination or non-radiative recombination, one of the sources of waste heat in semiconductors), or released as photons (optical recombination, used in LEDs and semiconductor lasers).
Carrier lifetime plays an important role in bipolar transistors and solar cells.
In indirect band gap semiconductors, the carrier lifetime strongly depends on the concentration of recombination centers. Gold atoms act as highly efficient recombination centers, silicon for some high switching speed diodes and transistors is therefore alloyed with a small amount of gold. Many other atoms, e.g. iron or nickel, have similar effect.
Read more about Carrier Lifetime: Carrier Lifetime in Semiconductor Lasers
Famous quotes containing the words carrier and/or lifetime:
“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”
—Njabulo Ndebele (b. 1948)
“It is well worth the efforts of a lifetime to have attained knowledge which justifies an attack on the root of all evilviz. the deadly atheism which asserts that because forms of evil have always existed in society, therefore they must always exist; and that the attainment of a high ideal is a hopeless chimera.”
—Elizabeth Blackwell (18211910)