Electron energy relaxation in infrared hot-electron transistors

Abstract

In hot-electron transistors and infrared hot-electron transistors, the energy distribution ρ(E) of the injected electrons after passing through the base can be directly measured at the collector. In this letter, a theoretical calculation on ρ(E) is presented, taking optical phonon emission and plasmon emission into account. We found that the relative contributions of these two mechanisms depend on the base doping density Nd. When Nd is less than 3.3×1017 cm −3, phonon emission dominates. For a larger Nd, plasmon emission becomes more important. We applied the calculation to devices with different Nd, and obtained quantitative agreement with the experiment.