Abstract
An attempt was made to follow, by pulse Dember effect measurements, the changes in vacancy concentration in ZnS resulting from variations of temperature and sulfur pressure. The p-type Dember pulse increases at constant temperatures roughly as the square root of the sulfur pressure; it decreases with temperature for a constant sulfur pressure so as to indicate a reaction energy of 0.6 ev per zinc vacancy formed. The “n-type” pulse measured in material with no added sulfur increases with temperature, yielding an activation energy of 1.1 ev for each pair of vacancies formed. Firing the “pure” ZnS in a running vacuum at 900°C, on the other hand, yields p-type material, indicating that the formation of an isolated Zn vacancy is energetically considerably more favorable than the formation of an isolated S vacancy. This conclusion agrees with the reaction energies mentioned above. © 1963, The Electrochemical Society, Inc. All rights reserved.