Nonlinear charge transport in bipolar semiconductors due to electron heating

•A new mechanism of nonlinearity of current-voltage characteristic (CVC) is proposed.•The hot electron temperature violates the equilibrium between electrons and holes.•This violation gives rise to nonequilibrium concentration of electrons and holes.•This leads to nonlinear CVC (along with the heating nonlinearity).

It is known that when strong electric field is applied to a semiconductor sample, the current voltage characteristic deviates from the linear response. In this letter, we propose a new point of view of nonlinearity in semiconductors which is associated with the electron temperature dependence on the recombination rate. The heating of the charge carriers breaks the balance between generation and recombination, giving rise to nonequilibrium charge carriers concentration and nonlinearity.