This thesis describes electrical measurements performed on low dimensional p-type devices, fabricated from GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. The Coulomb interaction between holes is similar to that between electrons. However, the kinetic energy is suppressed, which makes interaction effects particularly important. Holes may also be used to study band structure effects which arise from spin-orbit coupling in the valence band. The effects of Coulomb interactions in low dimensional electron systems are currently being studied extensively. Experiments presented in this thesis indicate the possible importance of Coulomb exchange interactions in both one and two dimensional hole systems (1DHSs,2DHSs). Tilted magnetic field studies of 2DHSs in the quantum Hall regime indicate that Landau levels at even filling factors will not cross. For high filling factor, this is attributed to a spin-orbit mixing effect which arises from the low symmetry ofthe system. At lower filling factor, activation-energy measurements verify that the energy gaps decrease and then increase as the field is tilted. However, the energy gap versus field dependences do not exhibit the curvature that might be expected from a perturbative anticrossing. It is speculated that the origin of this effect is a phase transition driven by the exchange interaction. Balanced arguments contrasting the relative strengths of the mixing and interactions theories are provided. The second part of this thesis describes a new method for the fabrication ofballistic 1DHSs, which exhibit clear conductance quantization. The quantization changes from even to odd multiples of e2/h as a function of the magnetic field in the plane of the heterostructure, as 'spin splitting' causes the 1D subbands to cross. Measurements of the 1D subband energy spacings are used together with the magnetic fields at which the crossings occur to calculate the in-plane g factors of the 1D subbands. These are found to increase as the number of occupied 1D subbands decreases. This enhancement of the g factor is attributed to exchange interactions; possible mixing explanations are also discussed. At higher magnetic fields, the pattern of quantization features shows that the subbands have crossed many times, and that the 1DHS can be strongly magnetized.

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Modulation doped heterostructures have revolutionized the operation of field effect devices by increasing the speed of operation. One of the factors that affects the speed of operation of these devices is the mobility of the carriers, which is intrinsic to the material used. Mobility of electrons in silicon based devices has improved drastically over the years, reaching as high as 50.000cm2/Vs at 4.2K and 2600cm2/Vs at room temperature. However, the mobility of holes in p-type silicon devices still remains comparatively lesser than the electron mobility because of large effective masses and complicated valence band structure involved. Germanium is known to have the largest hole mobility of all the known semiconductors and is considered most suitable to fabricate high speed p-type devices. Moreover, it is also possible to integrate germanium and its alloy (Si1_zGex ) into the existing silicon technology. With the use of sophisticated growth techniques it has been possible to grow epitaxial layers of silicon and germanium on Si1_zGex alloy layers grown on silicon substrates. In tills thesis we investigate in detail the electrical properties of p-type germanium and n-type silicon thin films grown by these techniques. It is important to do a comparative study of transport in these two systems not only to understand the physics involved but also to study their compatibility in complementary field effect devices (cMODFET). The studies reported in this thesis lay emphasis both on the low and high field transport properties of these systems. We report experimental data for the maximum room temperature mobility of holes achieved m germanium thin films grown on Si1_zGex layers that is comparable to the mobility of electrons in silicon films. We also report experiments performed to study the high field degradation of carrier mobility due to "carrier heating" in these systems. We also report studies on the effect of lattice heating on mobility of carriers as a function of applied electric field. To understand the physics behind the observed phenomenon, we model our data based on the existing theories for low and high field transport. We report complete numerical calculations based on these theories to explain the observed qualitative difference in the transport properties of p-type germanium and ii-type silicon systems. The consistency between the experimental data and theoretical modeling reported in this work is very satisfactory.