# Reply to the Comment on “Charged impurity scattering limited low temperature resistivity of low density silicon inversion layers”

In a recent Comment  on our earlier preprint  proposing a theoretical explanation for the observed strong temperature dependence of the low temperature resistivity of low density “metallic” Si inversion layers  Kravchenko et al. have raised a number of issues which require careful consideration. In this Reply to their Comment we discuss the issues raised in ref.  with respect to our work  and respond to the specific questions about our model  brought up by Kravchenko et al. .

It was conceded in ref.  that our theoretical results  “are qualitatively similar to those observed experimentally” but questions were raised about our choice of parameters for the charged impurity density ($`N_i`$) and the free carrier density ($`n_sn_c`$) with the implication that our choice of $`N_i`$ and $`n_sn_c`$ may be inconsistent with the experimentally used samples in ref. . We first point out that neither quantity ($`N_i`$ or $`n_sn_c`$) has been experimentally measured, and therefore the authors of ref.  are expressing their opinions based purely on theoretical speculations rather than making statements of facts in ref. . (This distinction was not clearly made in ref. .) Their remark  on our choice of the charged impurity density $`N_i`$ is based on a naive misunderstanding of our theory whereas our choice of $`n_sn_c`$ as the free carrier density (in fact, this is the definition of the effective free carrier density in our model ) is based on more subtle arguments than indicated by the discussion of ref. .

As emphasized in our original paper  the parameter $`N_i`$ only sets the overall resistivity scale in our theory in the sense that the resistivity $`\rho N_i`$$`N_i`$ does not affect the calculated temperature dependence at all. The actual value of $`N_i`$ is set in our work by demanding overall quantitative agreement between theory and experiment, and the very low value of $`N_i`$ ($`0.3\times 10^{10}cm^2`$) reflects the anomalously high peak mobility ($`71,000cm^2/Vs`$ at $`100mK`$) of the Si-15 sample, which has a peak mobility roughly a factor of five to seven higher than that in other typical good quality Si MOSFETs ($`10,00020,000cm^2/Vs`$). An independent confirmation of the low value of $`N_i`$ in the Si-15 sample comes from the empirical formula connecting $`N_i`$ and the peak mobility ($`\mu _m`$) derived by Cham and Stern  : $`\mu _m=1250(N_i/10^{12})^{0.79}`$ where $`\mu _m`$ is expressed in $`cm^2/Vs`$ and $`N_i`$ in units of $`10^{12}cm^2`$. This empirical formula leads to an $`N_i0.5\times 10^{10}cm^2`$ within a factor of two of the value $`N_i0.3\times 10^{10}cm^2`$ used in our work . The actual discrepancy is even less because the empirical formula  refers to the $`T=0`$ mobility, which for Si-15 should be considerably higher than $`71,000cm^2/Vs`$ because of the strong temperature dependence of the mobility observed in ref. . Thus the low value of $`N_i`$ used in our work  is necessitated by the anomalously high (almost an order of magnitude higher than usual) mobility of the Si-15 sample. The fact that a low value of $`N_i`$ is needed to obtain quantitative numerical agreement between our theory and the experimental Si-15 data  at high densities ($`n_sn_c`$), where the standard Drude-Boltzmann transport theory should be eminently valid, shows rather decisively the correctness of our choice of $`N_i`$ in ref. . We emphasize that the low value of $`N_i`$ used in ref.  simply reflects the anomalously high quality of the Si-15 sample of ref. , and nothing else.

Having established that our choice of $`N_i`$ in ref.  is quite reasonable we should now mention two aspects of our model  which seem to have been overlooked in the Comment . First, characterizing the charged impurity scattering by a single two-dimensional (2D) charge density of $`N_i`$ with all the impurity centers located randomly in a plane placed precisely at the Si-SiO<sub>2</sub> interface, as we do in ref. , is surely a highly simplified zeroth order model for a complicated situation where the charged impurity centers will be distributed over some distance inside the oxide layer. We use the simple model to keep the number of free parameters to a minimum (just one, $`N_i`$). If we modify the model slightly, for example, displace the random charged impurity plane some finite distance inside the oxide (or consider a three-dimensional impurity distribution, as is likely), we could considerably increase $`N_i`$, making it sound “more reasonable”. We believe that such fine tuning is unwarranted in a zeroth order model and should be left for future improvements of the theory. Second, our estimated $`N_i`$ is surely a theoretical lower bound on the possible value of the charged impurity density because our theory  clearly overestimates the impurity scattering strength as we neglect the modification in scattering due to electron binding to the impurities, and assume that the charged impurities scatter via the screened Coulomb interaction without taking into account the binding effect discussed qualitatively in ref. . Thus, the parameter $`N_i`$ in our model  should be taken as an effective (single) parameter which characterizes the overall impurity scattering strength in the system, which should not necessarily be precisely the same as the number density of bare Coulomb scatterers in the sample.

Now , we discuss the second point raised in ref.  regarding our choice of $`(n_sn_c)n_e`$ as the “effective” free carrier density participating in the “metallic” Drude-Boltzmann transport for $`n_s>n_c`$. This is a rather subtle issue because in our model  $`n_e`$ is, by definition, the free carrier density entering the conductivity $`\sigma =n_ee\mu `$ where $`\mu `$ is the carrier mobility — Drude-Boltzmann theory allows for an intuitive separation of the conductivity into an effective carrier density ($`n_e`$) and an effective carrier mobility ($`\mu `$). Our choice of $`n_en_sn_c`$ as the effective free carrier density leads to excellent qualitative (actually, semi-quantitative) agreement between our calculated theoretical results and all the published experimental results in Si MOSFETs and p-type GaAs heterostructures as far as the temperature dependent resistivity on the “metallic” side ($`n_s>n_c`$) is concerned. Our theory  also produces the experimentally observed non-monotonic temperature dependence in the resistivity arising from the quantum-classical crossover behavior which, we believe, to be playing an important role. We note that our choice of $`n_en_sn_c`$ as the effective free carrier density is not only consistent with the impurity binding/freeze-out scenario , but also with the percolation model of ref. .

The important open issue is, of course, a direct experimental measurement of $`n_e`$, the effective free carrier density near threshold (i.e., $`n_sn_c`$) at zero magnetic field. It has been known for long time  in MOSFET physics that a direct determination of the free carrier density near threshold at low temperatures is almost impossibly difficult (particularly if $`n_s10^{11}cm^2`$ as it is in the cases of our interest), requiring a number of simultaneous complex measurements which, to the best of our knowledge, have never been attempted in the samples showing the so-called 2D metal-insulator-transition (M-I-T) phenomena. Since there seems to be confusion or misunderstanding on this point  we take the liberty of quoting from the authoritative review article  by Ando, Fowler, and Stern: “If trapping, band tailing, or depletion charge are important (as they are near threshold) no single experiment can unambiguously give the mobility and carrier concentrations. … . The interpretation of the measurements is increasingly unreliable at carrier concentrations below $`10^{12}cm^2`$.” (p. 490 in ref. .) We believe that a direct measurement of the zero-field, low-temperature, low-density, near-threshold free carrier density through careful capacitance studies (which are extremely problematic at low densities and low temperatures) is the only way to decisively settle the question of the effective free carrier density participating in the “metallic” transport in the Si samples of ref. .

Following the procedure used in ref.  for GaAs systems, we can however determine the operational value of $`n_e`$ participating in the Si-15 sample. We show in Fig. 1

the extrapolated zero temperature conductivity $`\sigma (T=0)`$ of the Si-15 sample plotted as a function of the carrier density $`n_s`$, both for experimental data and our theoretical results . It is clear that $`\sigma (T=0)(n_sn_c^{})`$ in Fig. 1 where $`n_c^{}n_c`$. We believe that this specific functional behavior of the $`T=0`$ conductivity, vanishing approximately linearly in $`(n_sn_c)=n_e`$ near threshold, provides compellingly strong phenomenological support for our model of using $`n_e=n_sn_c`$ as the effective free carrier density in the Drude-Boltzmann theory. Note that in our model $`\sigma =n_ee\mu `$ with $`n_e=n_sn_c`$, and the calculated $`\mu `$ has very weak $`n_s`$ dependence near threshold (see Fig. 1) — this is strong support for our assumption that $`n_e=n_sn_c`$ provides a measure of the effective free carrier density in the theory. We have found  the same behavior in all the published Si data.

Third, we address the issue of the unpublished finite magnetic field (e.g. Hall effect) measurement of the free carrier density alluded to in ref. . This connection made in ref.  is, in fact, misleading since the application of an external magnetic field to a 2D system completely changes its physics by converting it to a quantum Hall system whose localization properties are still poorly understood. The free carrier density ($`n_e`$) entering our Drude-Boltzmann theory is, by definition, the zero-field free carrier density which is not necessarily the same as that measured in finite field quantum Hall-type experiments alluded to in ref. . This fact is most easily demonstrated by pointing out that the finite field measurements of the type mentioned in ref.  give the free carrier density to be $`n_s`$ even deep inside the localized regime ($`n_s<n_c`$) where the free carrier density in the Drude-Boltzmann theory is obviously zero, $`n_e=0`$ in the insulating phase. Thus the finite-field carrier density measurements give the free carrier density to be $`n_s`$ everywhere (both in the metallic and the insulating phase), and cannot therefore have anything to do with the parameter $`n_e`$ entering our Drude-Boltzmann theory. While understanding these interesting finite field measurements is clearly an important theoretical challenge (well beyond the scope of our manifestly zero field theory  aimed exclusively at understanding the temperature dependent resistivity on the “metallic” side), we disagree with the suggestion in ref.  that an understanding of the zero-field transport properties, as in ref. , must somehow depend crucially on a complete theoretical understanding of the quantum Hall behavior of these systems. (None of the proposed theoretical models for 2D M-I-T can account for the finite field quantum Hall behavior.)

Finally, we mention that characterization of our theory as a “simple classical model” in the concluding sentence of ref.  is misleading. While quantum interference corrections are neglected in our theory (we argue that quantum interference corrections are overwhelmed by the screening effects considered in our theory in the $`T100mK`$ temperature range considered in the experiments ), the striking temperature dependence  of our theoretical results arises entirely from the classical-quantum crossover phenomenon and the quantum screening of charged impurity scattering – a classical theory would not have any of the effects obtained in our calculation .

This work is supported by the U.S.-ARO and the U.S.-ONR.