Microscopic modelling of perpendicular electronic transport in doped multiple quantum wells

TL;DR

This paper develops a microscopic model for electronic transport in heavily doped superlattices, accounting for impurity and phonon interactions, and successfully matches experimental data while revealing increased intersubband spacing.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic microscopic approach to model transport in doped superlattices, incorporating interaction mechanisms and explaining experimental observations.

Findings

Good quantitative agreement with experimental data.

Spectral functions show increased intersubband spacing.

Potential explanation for experimental trends in domain formation.

Abstract

We present a microscopic calculation of transport in strongly doped superlattices where domain formation is likely to occur. Our theoretical method is based on a current formula involving the spectral functions of the system, and thus allows, in principle, a systematic investigation of various interaction mechanisms. Taking into account impurity scattering and optical phonons we obtain a good quantitative agreement with existing experimental data from Helgesen and Finstad (J. Appl. Phys. 69, 2689, (1991)). Furthermore the calculated spectral functions indicate a significant increase of the average intersubband spacing compared to the bare level differences which might explain the experimental trend.