Phonon-assisted tunnelling of electrons in a quantum well-quantum dot injection structure

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical study of phonon-assisted electron tunnelling between a quantum well and a quantum dot, highlighting how system geometry and temperature influence transition efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a combined kp and L"owdin elimination method to calculate electron states and analyze phonon-assisted relaxation in quantum well-quantum dot systems.

Findings

Transition efficiency depends critically on system geometry.

Under certain conditions, transition efficiency decreases with temperature.

Theoretical modeling of phonon-assisted tunnelling in nanostructures.

Abstract

We study theoretically phonon-assisted relaxation and tunnelling in a system composed of a quantum dot which is coupled to a quantum well. Within the kp method combined with the L\"owdin elimination, we calculate the electron states. We calculate acoustic phonon-assisted relaxation rates between the states in the quantum well and in the quantum dot and study the resulting electron kinetics. We show that transition efficiency crucially depends on the system geometry. We show also that under some conditions, transition efficiency can decrease with the temperature.