THE HALL EFFECT AND RESISTIVITY OF TELLURIUM

Abstract

The Hall effect and resistivity of seven crystalline samples of highly purified tellurium were investigated over the temperature range −190 °C to +350 °C. The samples were grown from zone-refined tellurium with an adaptation of the method of Tammann. The effective impurity concentrations were in the range 5 × 10⁻⁶ to 5 × 10⁻⁵ atomic per cent. The measurements were made with an a-c. method of high sensitivity.X-Ray investigations indicated that the purest sample was a single crystal, but that the others were polycrystalline. However, differences in the observed properties as a result of crystal structure were not large.At high temperatures pure tellurium exhibits an anomalous behavior in its Hall effect, and three proposed explanations of this anomaly were investigated in view of the data of this research. At much lower temperatures, it was concluded that tellurium behaved as a simple semiconductor with unique conduction and valence bands with a non-degenerate carrier distribution.