Ballistic electron transport in wrinkled superlattices

TL;DR

This paper investigates how wrinkled potential regions affect ballistic electron transport, revealing tunable transmission properties and analogies with elastic wave scattering, with potential applications in electronic device design.

Contribution

It introduces the study of ballistic electron scattering on wrinkled potentials, demonstrating how wrinkle parameters influence transmission and highlighting analogies with elastic wave phenomena.

Findings

Electron transmission depends on wrinkle amplitude and periodicity.

Minibands form in transmission for potential barriers.

Transmission complexity increases for potential wells.

Abstract

Inspired by the problem of elastic wave scattering on wrinkled interfaces, we studied the scattering of ballistic electrons on a wrinkled potential energy region. The electron transmission coefficient depends on both wrinkle amplitude and periodicity, having different behaviors for positive and negative scattering potential energies. For scattering on potential barriers, minibands appear in electron transmission, as in superlattices, whereas for scattering on periodic potential wells the transmission coefficient has a more complex form. Besides suggesting that tuning of electron transmission is possible by modifying the scattering potential via voltages on wrinkled gate electrodes, our results emphasize the analogies between ballistic electrons and elastic waves even in scattering problems on non-typical configurations.