Measurement of the energy gap in tellurium under pressure

Abstract

From photoconductivity and transmission spectra the dependence of the forbidden band width ϵg of tellurium on pressure (up to 10 kbar) at 300, 77, and 1.5 to 4.2 K is determined. This dependence is shown to be nonlinear, well described by the exponential relation ϵg(P) = ϵg0, e - ϵaP where the α-values differ not more than 15% at a temperature variation from 1.5 to 300 K.