Absolute Negative Conductivity and Spontaneous Current Generation in Semiconductor Superlattices with Hot Electrons

TL;DR

This paper investigates electron transport in semiconductor superlattices under combined electric and magnetic fields, revealing multistability, absolute negative conductivity, and spontaneous current generation due to hot electrons.

Contribution

It introduces a semiclassical model showing how hot electrons induce novel transport phenomena like ANC and spontaneous currents in superlattices under magnetic fields.

Findings

Current-voltage characteristic becomes multistable at high magnetic fields.

Hot electrons exhibit absolute negative conductivity.

Spontaneous dc current appears at zero bias under strong magnetic fields.

Abstract

We study electron transport through a semiconductor superlattice subject to an electric field parallel to and a magnetic field perpendicular to the growth axis. Using a single miniband, semiclassical balance equation model with both elastic and inelastic scattering, we find that (1) the current-voltage characteristic becomes multistable in a large magnetic field; and (2) ``hot'' electrons display novel features in their current-voltage characteristics, including absolute negative conductivity (ANC) and, for sufficiently strong magnetic fields, a spontaneous dc current at zero bias. We discuss possible experimental situations providing the necessary hot electrons to observe the predicted ANC and spontaneous dc current generation.