New types of resonant tunneling currents at Si-p/n junctions: one-dimensional model calculation

Abstract

New types of resonant tunneling currents at Si-p/n junctions, which are caused by the resonance between the donor and acceptor-dopant states and by the resonance states in a triangular quantum-well-like potential in the p/n junctions, are studied by a time-evolution simulation of electron wave packets. It is shown that the tunneling currents are enhanced by these resonances because the resonance states work as step stones for the inter-band tunneling transitions and the effective tunneling distance becomes short. We also show that such enhancement of tunneling currents can occur in not only indirect band-gap Si systems but also direct band-gap semiconductor systems.