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The results of studies of the optical and transport properties of epitaxial Pb0.74Sn0.26Te(In) films with a differently treated surface are presented. A comparative analysis of the results makes it possible to establish that the characteristic features of the photoconductivity spectra are defined by processes in the bulk while the surface states have practically no effect on the spectra. At the same time, the photoresponse kinetics and the rate of relaxation processes are heavily dependent on the state of the surface. The characteristic relaxation times of nonequilibrium charge carriers (about several milliseconds) are such that it is possible to use the methods of standard Fourier-transform spectroscopy to characterize optical transitions in the bulk.

In this paper, we report on photoconductivity induced by high-power laser radiation with a frequency of 2 THz in Hg0.87Cd0.13Te-based epitaxial structures. Experimental results obtained for a set of the samples with variable geometric parameters allow us to determine the photoresponse features of both bulk and nonlocal contributions to the net response. We show that the persistent photoconductivity effect originates from the non-equilibrium processes related to the bulk carrier excitation.

It is shown that PbTe:V single crystals are photosensitive in the terahertz spectral region up to the wavelength 280 μm. The measurements are conducted in the temperature range from 8 to 300 K. In this temperature range, the dark conductivity of the crystals exhibits the activation character of the temperature dependence and varies by four orders of magnitude, which is due to Fermi-level pinning 20 meV below the bottom of the conduction band. As the temperature is elevated and, correspondingly, the conductivity increases, the amplitude of the photoresponse substantially increases. This result is interpreted in the context of the model that takes into account significant broadening of the vanadium impurity level and its shift to the bottom of the conduction band with increasing temperature.

Temperature dependences of resistivity, magnetic susceptibility, and charge-carrier concentration and mobility in single-crystalline PbTe:V samples with a varied impurity content are investigated. It is shown that vanadium forms a donor level located ∼20 meV below the conduction-band bottom. The electron mobility is as high as 105 cm2 V−1 s−1 in the samples with N V ≤ 0.21 at % and proves to be more than an order of magnitude higher in the samples with the highest vanadium content N V = 0.26 at %. In the same samples, the real part of the conductivity is characterized by a pronounced frequency dependence. An increase in vanadium concentration is accompanied by a decrease in the effective magnetic moment of impurity atoms. The features of electron transport in PbTe:V may be caused by a variable vanadium valence and by the effect of interimpurity correlations.