Photon- and phonon-assisted transport of electrons in resonant tunneling structures

Abstract

The quantum mechanical theory of photon-and phonon assisted tunneling of electrons through the open multilayered nanostructures being the cascades of quantum cascade detector and quantum cascade laser is developed. The theory of electronic dynamic conductivity and spectral parameters (resonance energies and widths) of their quasi-stationary states is established within the effective mass approximation and models of rectangular and triangular potential profiles of resonant tunneling structure, respectively.It is shown that an open model of multilayered resonant tunneling structure, comparing with the closed one, adequately describes the physical processes in cascades and their elements (active regions, extractors, injectors) and, with respect to the experimental data, gives an opportunity to calculate and reveal their optimal geometrical design without any fitting parameters.

Room-Temperature Response Performance of Coupled Doped-Well Quantum Cascade Detectors with Array Structure

“…Compared with multiquantum-well infrared photodetectors (QWIPs), quantum cascade detectors (QCDs) are characterized by the insertion of asymmetric, multilevel, undoped layers as transport regions (TRs) between doped layers [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. This special structure allows photoelectrons to migrate from one period to the next by longitudinal optical (LO) phonon-assisted tunneling instead of an applied bias to bend the barrier-well structure [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. As an ideal photovoltaic detector without dark current, QCDs have attracted widespread attention over the last decade [ 10 , 11 ].…”