Steady-state carrier escape from single quantum wells

Author

Nelson, J. ; Paxman, M. ; Barnham, K.W.J. ; Roberts, J.S. ; Button, C.

Author_Institution

Imperial Coll. of Sci. Technol. & Med., London, UK

Volume

29

Issue

6

fYear

1993

fDate

6/1/1993 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1460

Lastpage

1468

Abstract

The authors have studied the variation in DC photocurrent with bias and temperature from GaAs-Al_xGa_1-xAs single quantum wells embedded in p-i-n diodes. They found that the observed temperature response shows Arrhenius behaviour with a field-dependent activation energy close to the hole well depth. This can be accounted for using a model based on the competition between photocarrier escape and recombination. Using reasonable values for the diode´s built-in voltage and the quantum-well recombination lifetime, good quantitative agreement between theory and experiment is achieved if it is assumed that the recombination rate is governed by the fastest escaping carriers, which are light holes in the present devices

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; carrier mobility; gallium arsenide; semiconductor quantum wells; Arrhenius behaviour; DC photocurrent; GaAs-Al_xGa_1-xAs; bias; built-in voltage; carrier escape; fastest escaping carriers; field-dependent activation energy; hole well depth; light holes; p-i-n diodes; p-i-n photodiodes; photocarrier escape; photocarrier recombination; quantum-well recombination lifetime; recombination rate; single quantum wells; temperature; temperature response; P-i-n diodes; Photoconductivity; Quantum well devices; Radiative recombination; Rapid thermal processing; Steady-state; Temperature; Thermionic emission; Tunneling; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/3.234396

Filename

234396