Simple Theoretical Analysis of the Photoemission from Quantum Confined Non-Linear Optical, Optoelectronic, and Related Materials

Abstract

In this paper, an attempt is made to study the photo emission from quantum wells (QWs), quantum well wires (QWWs), and quantum dots (QDs) of non-linear optical materials on the basis of a newly formulated electron dispersion law considering the anisotropies of the effective electron masses, the spin-orbit splitting constants and the presence of the crystal field splitting within the framework of k.p formalism. The results of quantum confined III–V optoelectronic compounds form the special cases of our generalized analysis. The photoemission has also been studied for quantum confined optoelectronic II–VI and stressed materials respectively. It has been found taking quantum confined CdGaAs2, Hg1−xCdxTe, In1−xGaxAsyP1−y lattice matched to InP, CdS, and stressed InSb as examples that the photo emission exhibits plateaus as function of incident photon energy, which is important from experimental point of view, analogous to the same type of plateaus which have been observed in quantum Hall effect in the variation of the quantized Hall resistance with quantizing magnetic field. The photoemission also exhibits quantized variations with changing electron concentration and field thickness, respectively, for all types of quantum confinement. The photoemission is the greatest for QDs and the least for QWs. In addition, the well-known results for bulk specimens of wide-gap materials have also been obtained as special cases from our generalized expressions under certain limiting conditions.