Lattice distortion (Peierls Transition) caused by spin interaction in the chaotic impurity system of a semiconductor

The effect of an elastic spontaneous distortion of the crystal lattice of a doped semiconductor Ge:As near the insulator–metal (IM) phase transition has been discovered. The effect is manifested in the electron spin resonance (ESR) of neutral As atoms as a splitting of the single resonance absorption line. It observed at electron concentrations in the range 0.8 < n/nC < 1 at low temperatures T < 100 K (nC = 3.7 × 1017 cm-3 is the critical electron concentration for the IM phase transition). The splitting is the strongest along each of the six [110] directions, which indicates that the local lattice distortion occurs just in these directions. As a result, a sample is possibly divided into separate domains differing in the directions of compressive or tensile deformations. A study of concentration, temperature, and angular dependences of the effect has shown that the phenomenon discovered can be understood in terms of the Peierls spin transition model.