Interlayer Transport in Disordered Semiconductor Electron Bilayers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how disorder impacts interlayer electron transport in semiconductor bilayers, revealing that increased disorder diminishes tunneling peaks and emphasizes the need for high-quality materials with long mean-free paths for observing exchange effects.

Contribution

It provides a self-consistent quantum transport analysis of disorder effects on interlayer tunneling in semiconductor bilayers outside quantum Hall conditions, highlighting the importance of material quality.

Findings

Disorder broadens and reduces the tunneling peak.

Shorter mean-free path suppresses exchange-enhanced transport.

High-quality materials are essential for observing exchange effects.

Abstract

We study the effects of disorder on the interlayer transport properties of disordered semiconductor bilayers outside of the quantum Hall regime by performing self-consistent quantum transport calculations. We find that the addition of material disorder to the system affects interlayer interactions leading to significant deviations in the interlayer transfer characteristics. In particular, we find that disorder decreases and broadens the tunneling peak, effectively reducing the interacting system to the non-interacting system, when the mean-free path for the electrons becomes shorter than the system length. Our results suggest that the experimental observation of exchange-enhanced interlayer transport in semiconductor bilayers requires materials with mean-free paths larger than the spatial extent of the system.