The influence of hydrostatic pressure on the electrical conductivity and Hall effect of CuInTe2 crystals

The influence of hydrostatic pressure on the electrical conductivity and Hall effect of p-CuInTe2 crystals grown by the Bridgman method is reported. The measurements were performed in the temperature interval 77 to 300 K and at hydrostatic pressures up 0.5 to 0.92 GPa. The increase of conductivity with pressure is explained as due to the increase of the free carrier concentration rather than a change in their mobility. Scattering by polar optical phonons is the main mechanism which determines the mobility of holes in specially undoped crystals in the low temperature range of (77 to 180) K. With increasing pressure, an additional number of carriers is created which partly screen the polar optical vibrations leading to an increase of the mobility with pressure. A semiconductor-metal transition is predicted in CuInTe2 at a pressure of about 1.3 GPa.