Thomas-Fermi approach to resonant tunneling in delta-doped diodes

TL;DR

This paper uses a Thomas-Fermi model to analyze resonant tunneling in delta-doped diodes, showing that conduction-band states dominate NDR phenomena and aligning well with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified theoretical approach to understand resonant tunneling in delta-doped diodes, emphasizing conduction-band effects over interband tunneling.

Findings

Negative differential resistance involves conduction-band states

Interband tunneling effects are negligible in this context

Theoretical results agree with experimental observations

Abstract

We study resonant tunneling in B-$\delta$-doped diodes grown by Si-molecular beam epitaxy. A Thomas-Fermi approach is used to obtain the conduction-band modulation. Using a scalar Hamiltonian within the effective-mass approximation we demonstrate that the occurrence of negative differential resistance (NDR) only involves conduction-band states, whereas interband tunneling effects seem to be negligible. Our theoretical results are in very good agreement with recent experimental observations of NDR in this type of diodes.