Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The phenomena accompanying the flow of an electric current through uniaxially compressed plates of intrinsic Ge are investigated. The plates are cut with definite orientations relative to the main crystallographic axes so that the directions of the current and field do not coincide. Under these conditions transverse gradients of the nonequilibrium carrier concentration arise in specimens long carrier lifetimes, this results in a modulation of the conductivity, emergence of rectifying characteristics, etc. In strong field the carriers and current are concentrated in a narrow layer close to one of surfaces, the carriers being almost completely removed from the rest of the specimen (the electrical pinch in an electron‐hole plasma). The redistribution of carriers across the sample and the current‐voltage characteristics are investigated experimentally for these pinch conditions. For fields of about 100 V/cm an increase and decrease of concentration is observed, giving an extremely nonlinear current‐voltage characteristic if opposite plate surfaces have different surface recombination velocities. A rectification ratio of about 50 may be obtained in this way. Under electrical pinch conditions the dependence of the resistance of the specimen on compression exceeds the ordinary piezoresistance by an order of magnitude.</jats:p>