Engineering interband tunneling in nanowires with diamond cubic or zincblende crystalline structure based on atomistic modeling

TL;DR

This paper investigates interband tunneling in nanowires with diamond cubic or zincblende structures using atomistic quantum transport simulations, deriving an analytical model that aligns well with simulation results.

Contribution

It introduces an atomistic modeling approach and an analytical expression for interband tunneling in nanowires, highlighting the effects of electric field, cross section, and material.

Findings

Interband tunneling is highly sensitive to electric field and nanowire cross section.

The analytical model accurately predicts transmission probability.

Material type significantly influences tunneling behavior.

Abstract

We present an investigation in the device parameter space of band-to-band tunneling in nanowires with a diamond cubic or zincblende crystalline structure. Results are obtained from quantum transport simulations based on Non-Equilibrium Green's functions with a tight-binding atomistic Hamiltonian. Interband tunneling is extremely sensitive to the longitudinal electric field, to the nanowire cross section, through the gap, and to the material. We have derived an approximate analytical expression for the transmission probability based on WKB theory and on a proper choice of the effective interband tunneling mass, which shows good agreement with results from atomistic quantum simulation.