Abstract
The following lectures are an elementary introduction to quantum transport and tunnelling in very small structures. The emphasis is on quantum ballistic systems for which collision processes are less significant than the free carrier motion in the strongly inhomogeneous (and possibly quantising) potential fields provided by the device structure. Quantum ballistic transport occurs when the carrier transit time is substantially shorter than the mean free time for inelastic collisions. Effects which may arise include size quantisation, localisation phenomena, low-dimensional effects, tunnelling and resonance phenomena. These are beyond the scope of classical Boltzmann-Bloch transport theory [1–3] (there is evidence that quantum effects can occur in quite “large” classical devices with channel dimensions of a few hundred nanometers). The pursuit of these effects has led to a very wide range of novel device structures in recent years [4–12].
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