Advances in Engineering Advances in Engineering features breaking research judged by Advances in Engineering advisory team to be of key importance in the Engineering field. Papers are selected from over 10,000 published each week from most peer reviewed journals.
Solid-State Electronics, Volume 75, September 2012, Pages 37-42
Jonathan D. Weiss
JSA Photonics LLC, P.O. Box 2930, Corrales, NM 87048, United States
Abstract
Along with a resistivity measurement, the measurement of the Hall voltage can provide a useful characterization of the electrical properties of a bulk semiconductor. Typically, both use a Van der Pauw-type configuration on a thin, planar material. Ideally, this involves infinitesimal current and voltage contacts on the periphery of a sample of infinitesimal thickness. When deviations from ideality occur, geometric errors are introduced, which can have an important impact on the accuracy of the measurement. These are in addition to errors such as those caused by offsets in the measurement system and any non-uniformity in the applied magnetic field. Assuming an ideally-thin, rectangular sample, analyses of two different measurement configurations of the Hall voltage are presented, illustrating the consequences of some of these geometric errors. They are the result of a solution to an electrostatics boundary-value problem.
