Direct optical band gap measurement in polycrystalline semiconductors: A critical look at the Tauc method

The direct optical band gap of semiconductors is traditionally measured by extrapolating the linear region of the square of the absorption curve to the x-axis, and a variation of this method, developed by Tauc, has also been widely used. The application of the Tauc method to crystalline materials is rooted in misconception-and traditional linear extrapolation methods are inappropriate for use on degenerate semiconductors, where the occupation of conduction band energy states cannot be ignored. A new method is proposed for extracting a direct optical band gap from absorption spectra of degenerately-doped bulk semiconductors. This method was applied to pseudo-absorption spectra of Sn-doped In₂O₃ (ITO) - converted from diffuse-reflectance measurements on bulk specimens. The results of this analysis were corroborated by room-temperature photoluminescence excitation measurements, which yielded values of optical band gap and Burstein-Moss shift that are consistent with previous studies on In₂O₃ single crystals and thin films.