Hopping conductivity in Mn-doped β-FeSi2 single crystals

The article gives a report on resistivity measurements on Mn-doped p-type FeSi2 single crystals and analyzes the data within the framework of different hopping conductivity models. Both the Mott [N. Mott and E. A. Davies, Electron Processes in Non-Crystalline Materials (Clarendon, Oxford, 1979)] and the Shklovskii–Efros [B. I. Shklovskii and A. L. Efros, Electronic Properties o0066 Doped Semiconductors (Springer, Berlin, 1984)] regimes of the variable-range hopping (VRH) conductivity are observed. It is shown that the temperature dependence of the resistivity of Mn-doped β-FeSi2 crystals, which follows a VRH conduction mechanism, can be expressed by a scaling expression of the form ln(ρ/ρ0)=Af(T/Tx). The characteristic and transition temperatures, as well as the complete set of parameters describing the properties of the localized holes (the localization radius, the dielectric permittivity, the width of the Coulomb gap Δ, and the values of the density of states at the Fermi level) are determined. The data above indicate existence of a rigid gap δ in the spectrum of the DOS in addition to Δ and point out to the polaronic nature of the charge carriers in the investigated compound.