Single electron tunneling in double and triple quantum wells

Abstract

Electron localization and tunneling in laterally distributed double quantum well (DQW) and triple quantum well (TQW) are studied. Triangular configuration for the TQWs as well as various quantum well (QW) shapes and asymmetry are considered. The effect of adding a third well to a DQW is investigated as a weakly coupled system. InAs/GaAs DQWs and TQWs were modeled using single subband effective mass approach with effective potential simulating the strain effect. Electron localization dynamics in DQW and TQW over the whole spectrum is studied by varying the inter-dot distances. The electron tunneling appeared highly sensitive to small violations of the DQW mirror symmetry. We show that the presence of a third dot increases the tunneling in the DQW. The dependence of the tunneling in quantum dot (QD) arrays on inter-dot distances is also discussed.