Oscillatory behaviour of the transport properties in PbTe quantum wells

Abstract

Oscillatory behaviour was detected in the dependences of the transport properties (electrical conductivity, Hall coefficient, charge carrier mobility, Seebeck coefficient and thermoelectric power factor) on the PbTe layer thickness d (d = 2–200 nm) in (001) KCl/PbTe/EuS quantum well (QW) structures at room temperature. The non-monotonic character of these dependences is attributed to quantum size effects, which manifest themselves in PbTe QWs at sufficiently small values of d. The positions of the extrema in the thickness dependences of the transport properties shift with changing electron concentration in PbTe QWs.

Size effects in p-PbTe nanostructures on polyamide

“…A qualitatively similar result was obtained by authors [10] for samples KCl/PbTe/EuS n-type of two series: stoichiometric PbTe and that containing 2 at.% Pb. Changing the lead content in samples, they varied the ntype carrier concentration level.…”

“…Naturally, we assumed that this behavior is due to size effects in quantum well formed by the potential barrier on the edge of polyamide substrate and oxidative layer on the condensate surface (similar to the results of [7][8][9][10]). …”

“…For infinitly height barriers, using effective mass approximation, energy levels are given [10]: Since PbTe is degenerate semiconductor, the quantization condition is expressed through the Fermi wave λB F B :…”

Oscillatory Behavior of Thermoelectric Properties in p-PbTe Quantum Wells

“…Earlier we reported oscillatory dependence of the transport properties on the layer thickness d in n-PbTe, n-PbSe, and n-PbS epitaxial thin films (see, for example, [17][18][19][20][21], and we attributed this oscillatory behavior to QSEs due to electron confinement in the IV-VI QWs. It is also of great interest to conduct similar studies for lead chalcogenides with p-type conductivity.…”

Non-monotonic thermoelectric behavior of lead telluride in quantum‐well‐like structures

“…Quantum effects become significant when the de Brogli wavelength of carriers is comparable to confinement structure length. The structure under consideration may be in the form of quantum wells [12,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22], quantum wires or quantum dots [23] depending upon size restriction in one, two and three dimensions, respectively. The electronic density of states shows marked departure from the usual parabolic variation observed in the bulk material.…”