Photoinduced Hole Tunneling in Resonant Tunneling Diodes

Abstract

The resonant tunneling of photoinduced holes in GaAs/AlAs n + -i-n + double barrier quantum well structures has been successfully observed in photocurrent measurements. We have found that the accumulation of photo-generated holes in the electron depletion region severely modify the electrostatic potential over the double barrier structure. As a result, the current-voltage curves are shifted to lower voltages. With the depletion approximation, the observed hole tunneling is identified as the resonant tunneling through the first light hole state in the quantum well of valence band