Quasi-ballistic resonant tunneling of minority electrons into the excited states of a quantum well

Abstract

Observation of energy-dependent transmission of nonequilibrium minority electrons through a symmetric double-barrier (DB) quantum well heterostructure is reported. The DB is placed in the base of a GaInAs/AlInAs bipolar transistor. The electrons are launched into the DB with variable kinetic energies using a tunnel barrier in the emitter and varying the emitter-base voltage. The resulting peak in the collector current provides for the first time evidence of quasi-ballistic resonant tunneling of minority carriers into the eigenstates of a quantum well. The small peak-to-valley ratio and the broad peak also demonstrate the importance of scattering and of the anisotropy in momentum space of the incident distribution function in the region between the ballistic electron launcher and the DB.