Indian Journal of Pure & Applied Physics Vol. 46, June 2008, pp. 394-396 Electronic transport property of liquid Cd-Te alloys Manjul Kumar, P N Gajjar*, B Y Thakore & A R Jani Department of Physics, Sardar Patel University, Vallabh Vidyanagar 388 120 *Department of Physics, School of Sciences, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad 380 009 E-mail: manjulkumar@yahoo.com Received 28 October 2007; revised 22 February 2008; accepted 4 April 2008 The temperature dependent electrical resistivity of liquid Cd 0.6 Te 0.4 alloys has been studied theoretically by employing Faber-Ziman formula. Also, the Faber-Ziman formulation is used to generate the partial structure factor of the liquid Cd 0.6 Te 0.4 alloys at 1062 o C. The electron-ion interaction is incorporated through a newly proposed local model potential alongwith Ichimaru-Utsumi (IU) dielectric screening function. Good agreement is achieved between the presently calculated results of resistivity with the experimental findings. Resistivity of liquid Cd 0.6 Te 0.4 shows a semiconducting behaviour in the liquid phase. Thus, the resistivity data for Cd-Te system are in qualitative agreement with the nearly-free electron picture. Keywords: Semiconductors, Liquid alloys, Electronic transport properties, Liquid structures, Pseudopotential 1 Introduction Among II–VI semiconductors, cadmium tellurides (Cd x Te 1-x ) and its alloys have special technological interest. Due to large atomic number and high band gap at room temperature, CdTe alloys are employed to fabricate electro-optic devices, high-performance infrared detectors, gamma-ray detectors and room- temperature radiation detectors. Experimentally, Ben Moussa et al 12 . had shown the temperature dependent electrical resistivity (ρ) and thermoelectric power (S) of liquid Cd x Te 1-x and found that thermoelectric power is minimum at x=0.6 for the concentration of Cd. In the present study, we have investigated theoretically the temperature (T) dependent electrical resistivity (ρ) of liquid Cd x Te 1-x near x=0.6 with the help of pseudopotential formalism. Recently, proposed model potential by Gajjar et al. 1,2 is used to describe the electron-ion interaction of the complex system is of the form. ( ) 2 2 4 0 3 4 2 2 2 4 6 2 4 3 2 4 4 exp 2 (1 ) cos( )[2 exp 1( 2 23)] sin( )[2 exp 1 (23 7 7) (1 )] 2 (11 14 ) B Z V q qU U U U U U U U U U U U U U U π − = Ω + ⎧ ⎫ − + − + ⎪ ⎪ − + + ⎪ ⎪ …(1) ⎨ ⎬ − + + ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ + − − ⎩ ⎭ where U = qr c Z, , q and r c are valency, atomic volume, magnitude of the momentum transfer vector and the parameter of the potential, respectively. In the present paper, the parameter of the potential given by Thakor et al. 3-,5 . is determined using q = q 0 condition. O Ω The approach of Faber and Ziman 6 is used to study the temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity of liquid Cd 0.6 Te 0.4 binary mixture. In the present computation of electrical resistivity of liquid Cd-Te, the local field correction function due to Ichimaru and Utsumi 7 is employed for the first time to investigate the effect of exchange and correlation effects with reference to the static Hartree 8 (H) screening function. The mathematical expressions of these two local field correction functions used in the present computations are as follows. ( ) ( ) 4 2 4 2 2 8 3 4 2 ln 4 2 IU AX B BX C f q AX BX C X X X X ⎧ ⎫ ⎡ ⎤ ⎛ ⎞ + + − ⎪ ⎪ ⎢ ⎥ ⎜ ⎟ ⎢ ⎥ ⎪ ⎪ ⎝ ⎠ ⎣ ⎦ = + + + ⎨ ⎬ − + ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ − ⎩ ⎭ …(2) and 0 ) q ( f H = …(3) where A, B and C are the constants of IU local field correction functions, and X = q/k F with ( ) 3 1 Z 3 F 0 2 K Ω π = being the Fermi wave vector of the alloys, respectively.