Investigation of acceptor centers in semiconductors by means of negative muons

The behavior (in the temperature range of 4-300 K) of the polarization of the negative muon spin for more than 20 n- and p-type crystalline silicon samples with impurity concentrations from ∼1012 to ∼1020 cm-3 made it possible (a) to infer the mechanisms for the relaxation of the magnetic moment of the Al acceptor in Si at different impurity concentrations, including the concentration region above the critical concentration corresponding to the Mott (insulator-to-metal) transition; (b) to find the value of the hyperfine interaction constant for the acceptor and to estimate the density of the hole wave function on the nucleus of the impurity atom