Thermal and electronic contributions to heat-transmission photoacoustic signals in semiconductors

The photoacoustic signal is investigated as a function of the modulation frequency in a heat-transmission detection configuration for semiconductor samples. The theoretical model for this configuration is given for the thermal and the elastic processes in addition to the carrier transport characteristics. The dependence of the photoacoustic signal on thermodiffusion, thermoelastic and electronic transport parameters is analyzed by comparing the theoretical and the experimental amplitude PA spectra.