Resonant tunneling through double barriers, perpendicular quantum transport phenomena in superlattices, and their device applications

Abstract

New results on the physics of tunneling in quantum well heterostructures and its device applications are discussed. Following a general review of the field in the Introduction, in the second section resonant tunneling through double barriers is investigated. Recent conflicting interpretations of this effect in terms of a Fabry-Perot mechanism or sequential tunneling are reconciled via an analysis of scattering. It is shown that the ratio of the intrinsic resonance width to the total scattering width (collision broadening) determines which of the two mechanisms controls resonant tunneling. The role of symmetry is quantitatively analyzed and two recently proposed resonant tunneling transistor structures are discussed. The third section deals with perpendicular transport in superlattices. A simple expression for the low field mobility in the miniband conduction regime is derived; localization effects, hopping conduction, and effective mass filtering are discussed. In the following section, experimental results on tunneling superlattice photoconductors based on effective mass filtering are presented. In the fifth section, negative differential resistance resulting from localization in a high electric field is discussed. In the last section, the observation of sequential resonant tunneling in superlattices is reported. We point out a remarkable analogy between this phenomenon and paramagnetic spin resonance. New tunable infrared semiconductor lasers and wavelength selective detectors based on this effect are discussed.