MODULE VI

Nanoelectonic devices- MODFETS, heterojunction bipolar Transistors

Resonant tunnel effect, RTD, RTT, Hot electron transistors
Coulomb blockade effect and single electron transistor, CNT
Transistors
Heterostructure semiconductor laser
Quantum well laser, quantum dot LED, quantum dot laser
Quantum well optical modulator, quantum well sub band photo
detectors, principle of NEMS

Ms.Sifna N Shajahan
EC402 Nanoelectronics
Modulation doping
• Properties of semiconductor can be altered by doping ie, incorporating
donors and acceptors
• When the doping atoms release their surplus charges, ionized donors or
acceptors are left behind and act as coulomb scatterers, thus inhibit the
motion of charges
• Solution to this problem is to separate the active region of the device
from the doping atoms, called as modulation doping
• Posses high mobilities

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 MODFETS (MOdulation Doped Field
Effect Transistor)
• A heterostructure field- effect device
• Also known as High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT)
• unique feature of the MODFET is the heterostructure, in which the wide-energy-
gap material is doped and carriers diffuse to the undoped narrow bandgap layer
at which heterointerface the channel is formed.
• Thus channel carriers in the undoped heterointerface are spatially separated
from the doped region and have high mobilities because there is no impurity
scattering
• The main advantage of modulation doping is the superior mobility. (no scattering)

• Most common heterojunctions are AlGaAs/GaAs, AlGaAs/InGaAs and InAlAs/

InGaAs heterointerfaces

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Structure of MODFET

Energy band diagram for OFF MODFET a)

thermal equilibrium

Energy band diagram for OFF MODFET b)

onset of threshold
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 Basic structure
MODFET based on AlGaAs/GaAs
• AlGaAs is the wide bandgap semiconductor, whereas GaAs is the narrow
bandgap semiconductor
• Barrier layer AlGaAs under the gate is doped (30nm thickness), except for a
narrow region d o
• Channel layer GaAs is undoped
• principle of modulation doping is carriers from the doped barrier layer are
transferred to reside at the heterointerface and are away from the doped
region to avoid impurity scattering
• Initially, the material is neutral and the conduction band is flat in the
AlGaAs and in the GaAs
• When the electrons of the donors in the AIGaAs are released, they move
around and some of them diffuse into the GaAs, where they lose potential
energy and are trapped in the GaAs because they cannot overcome the
barrier Δ Ec

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• The negatively charged electrons are now separated from the positively
charged donors leading to an electric field which drives the electrons back
towards the interface.
• The electrons are trapped in a field-induced triangular well with a typical
width of 10 nm
• This way, a 2DEG is formed
• It is an electron gas that is free to move in two dimensions, but tightly
confined in the third
• Top layer of n+-GaAs is for source and drain ohmic contacts

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• In equilibrium (Vg=0V), the fermi level is same throughout the device, the
channel conductance is very low and the transistor is off
• If V g > V T , the conduction and valence band are tilted and the electrons in
the GaAs accumulate at the heterointerface forming a 2DEG inside the
triangular well
• The channel conductance is very high and the transistor is on
• This way, a controlled switching of the conductance of the channel is
achieved
• qɸBn is the barrier height of the metal on the wide-bandgap
semiconductor, ΔE c is the conduction band discontinuity for the
heterojunction structure, and V P is the pinch-off voltage given by

• d 1 is the thickness of the doped region in AlGaAs and Ɛ s is the dielectric p

• A key parameter for the operation of a MODFET is the threshold voltage
VT which is the gate bias at which the channel starts to form between the
source and drain

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• VT corresponds to the situation when the bottom of the conduction band at
the GaAs surface coincides with the Fermi level

• The threshold voltage V T can be adjusted by using different values for ɸ Bn

and V P
• ΔE c is fxed for a given set of semiconductors
• When the gate voltage is larger than VT, a charge sheet is capacitively
induced by the gate at the heterojunction interface
• Charge sheet is also called as two dimensional electron gas

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Heterojunction bipolar Transistors (HBT)
• Bipolar transistors fabricated by using heterojunctions are called
heterostructure bipolar transistors
• As the emitter is fabricated by a wide bandgap semiconductor, the amount
of injected carriers from the base region to the emitter region is reduced,
thus improving the overall injection efficiency of the emitter
• can handle signals of very high frequencies up to several hundred GHz
• High speed
• Due to the good behaviour of AlGaAs–GaAs heterojuntions, and to high
values of the mobility, HBTs are usually fabricated from III-V
semiconductors
• In a typical HBT, the base length can be of about 50 nm and is heavily
doped, usually in the range of 1019 cm −3 and can be used up to frequencies
of approximately 100GHz
• The use of InGaAs–InAlAs and InGaAs–InP based heterostructures allows
even higher operating frequencies (∼200GHz)

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• The differences between the band structures corresponding to npn
homojunction and heterojunction transistors are shown below

Fig: Band structure under polarization in the active region of: (a)
homojunction bipolar transistor; (b) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT).

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• In figure (b) the band gap of the emitter is larger than that of the base
region
• consequently the barrier for the injection of electrons from the emitter to
the base, eVn, is lower than that corresponding to holes, eVp, which
results in an increment of the β factor
• The β factor is proportional to the ratio between the doping concen-
tration of the emitter and base regions and to the coefficient exp(ΔEg/kT
), where Δ Eg is the energy difference between the value of the wide
bandgap of the emitter and that of the narrow bandgap of the base region
• Thus at room temperature kT ∼ 0.026 eV, a small gap difference ΔEg
substantially increases the β factor
• All these factors mean that HBTs requires a heavily doped base
transistors with a very low value of the base resistance
• Simultaneously, the doping of the emitter can be reduced, resulting in a
smaller parasitic capacitance associated to the emitter–base junction
• The simultaneous reduction of the base resistance and the capacitance of
the emitter–base junction are essential for the correct performance of
HBTs at high frequencies

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 • A graded base HBT, can be fabricated with diminishing bandgap from the
emitter to the collector region
• As a consequence, an internal electric field is created which accelerates
electrons travelling through the base region, and therefore, allows HBTs
to operate at even higher frequencies
• if the collector region is also fabricated from a wide bandgap
semiconductor, the breakdown voltage of the base–collector junction can
be increased
• This structure, called double HBT or DHBT, allows the interchange
between the emitter and collector terminals, which facilitates the design
of integrated circuits

(a) HBT with graded base region; (b) double HBT, with wide bandgap emitter and
collector semiconductors
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 Basic structure

Fig: Structure of a NPN AlGaAs/GaAs HBT

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• Heavily doped n+ GaAs layers form low-resistance ohmic contacts for the
emitter and collector contact
• heavily doped p+ GaAs layer is used for the base
• The high base doping makes the device less susceptible to punch through
and the base can be made thinner resulting in a faster transistor
• The collector is lightly n doped
• The use of grading layers improves electron movement from the emitter to
the base
• Additionally space-charge recombination currents at the interface notch are
reduced and the turn-on voltage is lowered
• The potential barriers for hole injection ΔVp and electron injection ΔVn in a
graded emitter-base junction differ by the bandgap difference ΔEg between
the AlGaAs emitter and the GaAs base
• The electrons injected from the emitter to the base therefore see a lower
barrier than the holes injected from the base into the emitter

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Operation of a HBT
• The base-emitter juction is forward biased and the collector-base junction
is reversed biased
• The equilibrium is disturbed and electrons are injected from the emitter
into the base
• They diffuse across the base until they reach the edge of the base-
collector depletion region
• Then they immediately accelerated across the base-collector junction into
the collector where they are majority carriers and can contribute to the
collector current
• The base current is due to the holes diffusing from the base into the
emitter
• In general, the ratio of electron current to hole current where the emitter
and base may be made of different semiconductors is

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• NA and ND are emitter and base doping, niB2 and niE2 are the electron-hole
products for the emitter and base, Dp and Dn are the hole and electron
diffusion constants, W B is the base width and L p the hole diffusion length
• For the HBT ni B2 and ni E2 are no longer the same

• For sufficiently large ΔEg,Ip will be completely suppressed, virtually

independent of either the emitter and base doping or base width

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 Resonant tunnel effect (RTE)
• Tunneling rate through two thin potential walls, which form a quantum
well, increases enormously if the incoming electron has an energy
coinciding with one of the allowed energy levels in the well
• i.e, the electron can tunnel through both walls if its energy corresponds
to one of the allowed energy eigen values within the well termed as
Resonant tunnel effect

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 Resonant Tunnel Diode (RTD)
• a quantum well structure semiconductor device that uses electron
tunnelling
• unique property of negative differential resistance (NDR) in its
current-voltage characteristics
• operation of NDR quantum well electronic devices is based on the so-
called
• Operation is based on Resonant Tunnel Effect (RTE) which takes
place when the current travels through a structure formed by two
thin barriers with a quantum well between them

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Band structure of RTD under different
voltages and I-V characteristics

Schematic representation of the conduction band of a resonant tunnel

diode: (a) with no voltage applied; (b), (c), and (d) for increasing
applied voltages; (e) current–voltage characteristic
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• Fig a) shows the conduction band of a double heterojunction with a
quantum well between the junctions
• The thickness of the quantum well is supposed to be small enough (5–10
nm) as to have only one allowed electron energy level E 1 (resonant level)
• The well region is made from lightly doped GaAs surrounded by higher
gap AlGaAs
• The outer layers are made from heavily doped n-type GaAs (n+ GaAs) to
facilitate the electrical contacts
• The Fermi level of the n+ GaAs is represented within the conduction band
• When there is no forward voltage bias, most of the electrons and holes
are stationary forming an accumulation layer in the emitter and collector
region respectively

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• As a forward voltage bias is applied, an electric field is created that causes
electrons to move from the emitter to the collector by tunneling through the
scattering states within the quantum well

• These quasi-bound energy states are the energy states that allow for
electrons to tunnel through creating a current.
• As more and more electrons in the emitter have the same energy as the quasi-
bound state, more electrons are able to tunnel through the well, resulting in
an increase in the current as the applied voltage is increased

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• When the electric field increases to the point where the energy level of the
electrons in the emitter coincides with the energy level of the quasi-bound
state of the well, the current reaches a maximum value (a-b)

• As the applied voltage continues to increase, more and more electrons are
gaining too much energy to tunnel through the well and the current is
decreased.

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• After a certain applied voltage, current begins to rise again because of
substantial thermionic emission where the electrons can tunnel through
the non-resonant energy levels of the well

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 Resonant Tunneling Transistors (RTT)
• Diodes based on the resonant tunnel effect (RTE) can be incorporated into
standard bipolar transistors, field effect transistors or into hot electron
transistors, thus creating devices with new properties called resonant tunnelling
transistors
• Consider a bipolar transistor in which a RTD is added to the emitter junction
• Since the emitter to base polarization voltage, VEB, controls the tunnelling
resonant current, the collector current will show the typical RTD dependence
• Between the emitter and base regions of this transistor there exists a resonant
tunnelling heterostructure, capable of injecting a large current when the electron
resonant condition is reached
• The position of the resonant level related to the emitter, is controlled by the
voltage level applied to the base region, V BE
• This voltage can be increased until the resonant condition is reached
• A maximum in the output current, I C is then produced
• If VBE is further increased, the current starts to diminish until a minimum value
at V 2 is reached
• Therefore, the output characteristics of this transistor also show regions of
negative differential resistance (NDR)
• the resonant tunnel structure injects electrons in a very narrow energy range 24
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 Schematic energy band representation of a
resonant tunnelling hot electron transistor
biased in the active region

Collector current of a resonant

tunnelling transistor as a function
of: (a) base–emitter voltage; (b)
collector–emitter voltage

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 Hot electron transistor (HET)
• When the semiconductor is in thermal equilibrium, the electron temperature Te
coincides with the temperature T of the crystal structure
• Under non-equilibrium conditions, when an external applied electric field
accelerates electrons to very high velocities, the kinetic energy, and thus Te, can
reach values which are much higher than those corresponding to the temperature
of the crystal
• In this case, the electrons are far from thermodynamic equilibrium, and receive
the name of hot electrons
• Heterojunctions between different gap semiconductors allow the generation of
hot electrons, since the electrons will acquire a kinetic energy, given by the energy
discontinuity in the conduction band Δ Ec, when travelling from a wide bandgap
semiconductor to one with smaller bandgap
• when travelling across the junction the electron beam suffers a collimating effect
as a consequence of the acceleration suffered by the electrons in the direction of
the electric field
• This effect, called electron injection by heterojunction, makes the outgoing
electrons concentrate inside a cone of about 10° of aperture

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• In HET, carriers injected from the emitter have high potential or kinetic
energy in the base
• Since a hot carrier has higher velocity, HETs are expected to have higher
intrinsic speed, higher current and higher transconductance
• Also known as Tunneling Hot-Electron Transfer Amplifier (THETA)

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• The typical structure of a hot electron transistor consists of a n+ GaAs emitter, a
very thin (∼50 Å) AlGaAs barrier, the GaAs base region (∼1000 Å), another thick
AlGaAs barrier of about 3000 Å, and the n+ GaAs collector
• When a positive voltage is applied to the collector, the injection of hot
electrons coming from the emitter takes place by tunnelling through the thin
AlGaAs barrier, since the base is positively biased with respect to the emitter
• the barrier’s effective thickness can be modulated by varying the voltage
difference between emitter and base VBE
• The velocity of the injected electrons is about 5×108 cms −1 and the electrons
are collimated inside a cone of about 6°
• The current gain through the base, α, can be made close to unity if both the
scattering in the base region and reflection in the collector barrier are reduced
as much as possible
• base transit time can be of the order of tens of femtoseconds, but the crossing
of the collector barrier is relatively higher
• total time of transit should be considered on the order of 1 ps

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 Coulomb blockade effect
• Consider a semiconductor of nanometric size in all the three spatial
dimensions, such as a quantum dot
• even the change of one elementary charge in small systems such as
quantum dot has a measurable effect in the electrical and transport
properties of the dot
• This phenomenon is known as Coulomb blockade
• Also Refer MODULE V

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 Single electron transistor
• The concept of single electron transistor (SET) is based on the behaviour
of 0D nanometric structures, such as quantum dots, in which electrons
are distributed in discrete energy levels
• One of the most interesting properties of these structures, associ-
• ated to energy level quantification, is the so-called Coulomb blockade
effect
• When the tiny conducting material is extremely small (also called
“island”), the electrostatic potential significantly increases even when
only one electron is added to it
• For the correct operation of SETs two conditions have to be met
• First, the change in electric energy when an electron enters or leaves the
quantum dot, has to be much larger than kT, which in terms of the
capacitance is C<< e2 /kT
• Secondly, the resistance RT of the tunnel junction must be large enough
compared to the quantum resistance R Q = h/e 2 (∼25.8 kΩ)

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• Inorder to observe coulomb blockade effect, three terminals are required
in transistors
• One of these terminals can be used as a gate to control the current flow
through the quantum dot
• SET basically consists of a quantum dot connected to the source and drain
electrodes through tunnel junctions
• The gate electrode is coupled to the quantum dot by an insulating
material, in such a way that the electrons cannot tunnel through the
barrier
• Since the source or drain current flow is controlled by the gate, the three-
terminal device operates as a transistor, although it cannot be used for
signal amplification

Fig: (a) Structure of a single electron transistor (SET); (b) equivalent circuit as a three
terminal device; (c) current as a function of the gate voltage.
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• In the schematic representation, quantum dot, with total electron charge Ne, is
referred to as Coulomb island and is connected to the source and drain by two
tunnel barriers
• The number of electrons in the Coulomb island can be controlled by the
external voltage, V G
• The current–voltage characteristics of the SET can be determined by applying a
continuously sweeping voltage, V G, to the gate electrode
• The applied voltage induces a charge CVG in the opposite plate of the capacitor,
which is compensated by the tunnelling of a single electron that enters the
quantum dot
• the current flow due to the discrete charges that tunnel through the barriers
leads to Coulomb oscillations
• These oscillations are recorded as a current variation between the source and
the drain, I DS , as a function of the gate voltage
• Between two consecutive peaks, the number of electrons in the quantum dot is
fixed and therefore no current flows
• The periodicity of the voltage peaks, V, is given by the one electron variation in
the total number of electrons in the quantum dot,
i.e. ΔV = e/C
• The capacitance of the quantum dot can be obtained by measuring the voltage
difference between two consecutive peaks

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 CNT Transistors
• A field-effect transistor that utilizes a single carbon nanotube or an array
of carbon nanotubes as the channel material instead of bulk silicon in the
traditional MOSFET structure
• CNT is a tubular form of carbon with diameter as small as 1nm and length
few nm to microns which is equivalent to a two dimensional graphene
sheet rolled into a tube
• CNTFET is a three terminal device consisting of a semiconductor
nanotube with two contacts (source and drain),and acting as a carrier
channel, which is turned on or off electrically via the third contact (gate)
Types are:
• Top gate
• Back gate
• Wrap-around gate

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Back-gated CNTFETs
• The earliest techniques for fabricating carbon nanotube (CNT) field-effect
transistors involved pre-patterning parallel strips of metal across a silicon
dioxide substrate, and then depositing the CNTs on top in a random
pattern
• The semiconducting CNTs that happened to fall across two metal strips
meet all the requirements necessary for a field-effect transistor
• One metal strip is the "source" contact while the other is the "drain"
contact
• The silicon oxide substrate can be used as the gate oxide and adding a
metal contact on the back makes the semiconducting CNT gateable
Drawbacks:
• The metal contact, which actually had very little contact to the CNT, since
the nanotube just lay on top of it and the contact area was therefore very
small

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Fig: Back gated- Top and side view of carbon nanotubes deposited on a silicon
oxide substrate pre-patterned with source and drain contacts

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Top-gated CNTFETs
• A single-walled carbon nanotubes are solution deposited onto a silicon
oxide substrate
• After an individual tube is isolated (via atomic force microscope or
scanning electron microscope), source and drain contacts are defined and
patterned using high resolution electron beam lithography
• A thin top-gate dielectric is then deposited on top of the nanotube, either
via evaporation or atomic layer deposition
• Finally, the top gate contact is deposited on the gate dielectric,
completing the process
• Arrays of top-gated CNTFETs can be fabricated on the same wafer, since
the gate contacts are electrically isolated from each other, unlike in the
back-gated case

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MESCE,Kuttippuram 37
Wrap-around gate CNTFETs
• Instead of gating just the part of the CNT that is closer to the metal gate
contact, the entire circumference of the nanotube is gated
• This should ideally improve the electrical performance of the CNTFET,
reducing leakage current and improving the device on/off ratio

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• Basic principle operation of CNTFET is the same as MOSFET where
electrons are supplied by source terminal and drain terminal will collect
these electrons
• In other words, current is actually flowing from drain to source terminal
• Gate terminal controls current intensity in the transistor channel and the
transistor is in off state if no gate voltage is applied

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MESCE,Kuttippuram 40
 Heterostructure semiconductor laser
• Consists of atleast three semiconductor layers sandwitched on top of
each other
• The middle layer, the active zone, has a smaller bandgap than the other
two outer ones
• The thin active region is undoped or doped slightly p-type, while one of
the adjacent layers is doped heavily p-type and the other one n-type

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• Double heterostructure (DH) lasers show a high efficiency, low
threshold current, and a high modulation bandwidth, which makes
them very suitable for optical communications.
• When the junction is forward baised, the charges carries (ie.,
Electron and holes) are injected into the active region (ie to narrow
band gap of P-GaAs) in high concentration
• Thus the layer GaAs contains a large concentration of electron in
conduction band and large number of holes within the valance band
• Thus population inversion is achieved between the conduction band
and valence band of p-GaAs
• Recombination of electron-holes occurs at p-GaAs which leads to
spontaneous emission of photon
• This spontaneous photon will stimulate more electron to recombine
with holes, thus a stimulated photon is emitted
• This stimulated photon travel back and front between the polished
surface
• When the stimulated photons has enough strength, laser beam emerges
from the diode with wavelength of 8000 A°

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 band diagram which shows the potential
wells for electrons and holes

profile of the refractive index

optical confinement in the active region

Fig: Comparison of the structure and characteristics of semiconductor lasers:

(a) homojunction; (b) double heterostructure.

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 The materials are selected such that Eg1 and
Eg3 are greater than Eg2 to achieve carrier
confinement, while n2 is greater than n1
and n3 to achieve light confinement.
Stimulated emission takes place in the p-n
junction region between layers 2 and 3

Fig: Energy-band diagram and refractive index

as functions of position for double-
heterostructure semiconductor laser amplifier

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 Quantum Well Laser
• In order to improve the properties of heterostructure semiconductor
laser and in particular to have a very narrow emission spectrum and
wavelength tunability, quantum well lasers were developed
• the improved characteristics of quantum well lasers are mainly due to
the properties of the 2D density of states function and characteristic of
quantum wells
• active region of the device is so narrow (10nm) that quantum
confinement occurs
• The wavelength of the light emitted by a quantum well laser is
determined by the thickness of the active region
• Quantum well lasers have active regions of about 100 Å thick, which
restricts the motion of the carriers in a direction normal to the well
• This results in a set of discrete energy levels for the carriers moving in
that direction which causes drastic changes to electronic and optical
properties
• Provides high gain at low carrier density, low threshold current

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Single quantum well
• Single active region

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 Multiple Quantum well

• Multiple active regions

• Layers separating the active regions are called barrier layers
• Better confinement of the optical mode is obtained in MQW lasers in comparison to
SQW lasrer
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GRaded INdex Separate Confinement heterostructures (GRINSCH)
• One drawback of the regular DH lasers is that both carrier confinement and optical
waveguiding takes place in the same region
• In GRINSCH two separate confinement structures frequently used
• The structures are obtained by grading the composition of AlxGa1−x As compounds
with values of x between zero and about 0.30, the value of the gap increasing from
1.41 eV to about 2.0 eV.
• In the separate confinement structure a quantum well of width d of 5–10 nm is
immersed in a wider cavity of width w which is optimized for enhancing the light
waveguiding effect, thus having separate carrier and optical confinement structures
• The waveguiding effect can be further improved by grading the refractive index, as
shown in the lower part of Figure (b)

Fig : Separate confinement structures of

quantum wells inside optical cavities: (a)
profile of the conduction band and index of
refraction; (b) GRINSCH structure; (c) multiple
quantum well separated confinement
heterostructure MESCE,Kuttippuram 48
 Quantum dot laser
• a semiconductor laser that uses quantum dots as the active laser medium in its
light emitting region
• Capable of generating multiple wavelength simultaneously with a single device
• Due to the tight confinement of charge carriers in quantum dots, they exhibit
an electronic structure similar to atoms
• In quantum dots, carriers are confined in the three directions in a very small
region of space, producing quantum effects in the electronic properties
• To achieve optical confinement, dots are placed in between a separate
structure called the confinement heterostructure
• An ideal quantum dot laser emit light at wavelengths corresponding to the
energy levels of the dots rather than the band gap energy
• Thus, they offer the possibility of improved device performance and increased
flexibility to adjust the wavelength
• Has the maximum material gain and differential gain, at least 2-3 orders higher
than QW lasers
• QD lasers suppress the diffusion of non-equilibrium carriers, resulting in
reduced leakage from the active region
• Shows superior temperature stability of the threshold current

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 Basic Characteristics of QD Lasers
• In a laser, the stimulated emission is amplified by passing the emitted
photons to stimulate emission at other locations
The basic components of a laser are
• An active medium (QD) where population inversion is created by a proper
pumping mechanism. The spontaneously emitted photons at some site in
the medium stimulate emission at other sites as it travels through it
• An energy pump source
• Two reflectors to reflect the light in phase so that the light will be further
amplified by the active medium in each round-trip. The output is partially
transmitted through a partially transmissive output coupler where the
output exits as a laser beam

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 • An ideal QD laser consists of a 3D-array of dots with equal size and shape,
surrounded by a higher band-gap material which confines the injected
carriers
• The whole structure is embedded in an optical waveguide consisting of
lower and upper cladding layers
• QD lasers are established by spontaneous formation of QDs at growth
temperatures between 460 and 550°C

Fig: Schematic band structure of a quantum dot laser with self-organized dots under
forward bias

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• Consider an edge-emitting laser based on self-assembled quantum dots
• The device consists of several layers forming a pin diode structure
• The layers are, from bottom to top, the n-GaAs substrate, a n-AlGaAs layer,
an intrinsic GaAs layer with the dots, a p-AlGaAs layer, and a p-GaAs cap
layer
• Metallic contacts on the substrate and the cap layer connect the device to
an external circuit
• Under a forward bias voltage, electrons and holes are injected into the
middle intrinsic GaAs layer or active layer, where they fall into the quantum
dots, which have a smaller bandgap, and recombine there

Fig: quantum dot laser

based on self-assembled
dots

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• The emission wavelength corresponds to the interband transition of the
InAs quantum dots
• The GaAs layer, which is sandwiched between AlGaAs layers with a lower
refractive index, confines the light and increases the interaction with the
carriers
• The InAs wetting layer contributes to an efficient diffusion of carriers into
the dots
• InAs bandgap is smaller than that of GaAs, and therefore, collects carriers
that reach the GaAs layer
• Because the wetting layer is very thin, its bandgap is larger than that of
the quantum dots, and carriers diffuse quickly into the dots

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Comparison between quantum dot and quantum well laser
• Quantum Well vs. Quantum Dot
– 2-D vs. 0-D
• Quantum Well lasers
– Change the output wavelength by changing the dimensions of
the well
– Larger population inversion needed to lase
• Q-dot lasers
– Broad range of light emission by changing dot size
– Small active volume means smaller population inversion
necessary for lasing. Leads to:
» Less temperature dependence of threshold current
density
» Increase in gain (2-3 times larger than Q-well)
» High frequency operation
» More efficient laser

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 Quantum well optical modulator
• Quantum wells can be used for the direct modulation of light, since they
show much larger electro-optic effects than bulk semiconductors
• Large changes in the optical absorption spectrum of quantum wells is
observed (due to the quantum confined Stark effect (QCSE) with the
application of electric fields
• The quantum-confined Stark effect (QCSE) describes the effect of an
external electric field upon the light absorption spectrum or emission
spectrum of a quantum well (QW)
• Electroabsorption modulators are based on the change of the optical
absorption coefficient in a quantum well under effect of an electric field
• a mesa-etched modulator based on this effect is shown in figure

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Fig: Mesa-etched electroabsorption modulator based on the quantum confined
Stark effect

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• It make use of a set of multiple quantum wells (MQW) which consists of
an array of several quantum wells (5 to 10 nm in thickness each) of the
type AlGaAs–GaAs–AlGaAs
• The structure is placed between the p+ and n+ sides of a reverse biased
junction
• Since the whole MQW structure has a thickness of about 0.5µm, small
reverse voltages can produce electric fields in the 10 4 to 10 5 Vcm −1 range
• These fields induce changes in the excitonic absorption edge in the
energy range 0.01–0.05 eV
• Electroabsorption modulators allow high speed modulation with a large
contrast ratio of transmitted light through the device
• The contrast ratio can be as high as 100 by working in the reflection
mode instead of the transmission one
• This is done by depositing a metal layer substrate and forcing light to
make two passes
• Electroabsorption modulators can operate up to frequencies of several
tens of GHz and if high electric fields are applied, the maximum frequency
can approach 100GHz

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• This is because the maximum frequency of operation is limited by the
mechanism of carrier extraction from the quantum wells
• For low fields, the generated electron–hole pairs during absorption are
unable to escape from the quantum well
• If the fields are high enough, the electrons and holes can escape from the
wells by tunnelling with a characteristic time of a few picoseconds
• Another use of quantum well modulators is also based on the QCSE but
operating at a photon energy below the excitonic absorption edge.
• In this case, the electric field affects mostly the refractive index and
consequently the phase of the light beam
• One example is the Mach–Zehnder interferometer
• In this device, the incoming signal from an optical waveguide is split in
two beams of the same intensity which travel through different channels
in the material of the same length before they recombine again
• An electric field is applied to one of the branches causing differences in
phase between the two beams and causing interference patterns at the
meeting point.

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Fig: Schematic of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer.

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Quantum well sub band photo detectors
• Quantum wells can be used for the detection of light in any spectral
region
• It is in the IR region between 2 and 20µm, that quantum well
photodetectors are preferably used for example in applications of night
vision and thermal imaging
• The problem with photodiodes based on band to band transitions across
the semiconductor gap Eg in p–n homojunctions is that they require
materials with very low values of Eg
• In the case of III-V compounds this leaves us with InAs 1−x Sbx with x ≈ 0.5
• Another aspect which makes quantum wells very appropriate for use in IR
detection is due to the large values of the dipole matrix elements
corresponding to intersubband optical transitions
• In addition, wavelength tunability is easily implemented since the
energies of the levels in a quantum well can be adjusted by the
fabrication parameters in particular its width
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• Quantum Well Infrared Photodetector (QWIP) or sub band photo
detectors is an infrared photodetector, which uses
electronic intersubband transitions in quantum wells to absorb photons
• The parameters of the quantum wells are adjusted so that the energy
difference between its first and second quantized states match the
incoming infrared photon energy

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• The basic elements of a QWIP are quantum wells which are separated by
barriers
• The quantum wells are designed to have one confined state inside the
well and a first excited state which aligns with the top of the barrier
• The wells are n-doped such that the ground state is filled with electrons
• The barriers are wide enough to prevent quantum tunneling between the
quantum wells
• When a bias voltage is applied to the QWIP, the entire conduction band is
tilted
• Without light the electrons in the quantum wells just sit in the ground
state
• When the QWIP is illuminated with light of the same or higher energy as
the intersubband transition energy, an electron is excited.
• Once the electron is in an excited state, it can escape into the continuum
and be measured as photocurrent
• To externally measure a photocurrent the electrons need to be extracted
by applying an electric field to the quantum wells

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Fig: Optical absorption transitions for IR detection in a quantum well: (a) intersubband
transitions; (b) transition from a bound state to the continuum narrow band outside
the potential wells. (F is the applied electric field.)

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• Figure shows the absorption transitions suitable for IR detection for a
single quantum well under the action of an applied electric field
• There are two energy levels in each well, the second level being located
close to the top of the barriers
• The separation between levels should be in the range 0.1–0.2 eV
• Under light irradiation, this type of photodetectors generates a current by
tunnelling of the carriers outside the wells
• Sometimes, it is more effective to make use of absorption transitions
between a single level in the well and the first continuum narrow band
outside it (Figure b)

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 Principle of NEMS
• Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) refer to nanoscopic device that have a
characteristic length of less than 100nm and combine electrical and mechanical
components
• NEMS can be fabricated either by top-down or bottom-up processes
• Top-down methods using lithographic techniques are the most common
• Bottom-up approaches involve the fabrication of nanoscale devices by
sequential assembly using atomic and molecular building blocks
• Fabrication of NEMS structures is not limited to Si
• III–V compounds such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) make particularly good NEMS
materials
• The basic mechanical element of a NEMS is a nanosize suspended film, a
membrane or a beam (active part)
• The materials for these active components are silicon and silicon carbide,
carbon nanotube, gold, platinum etc
• One of the main constraints in the wide-scale application of NEMS is expected
to be in their packaging
• Since each device will have a unique requirement for interacting/ protection
from environment, it is diicult to standardize the packaging procedure

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 PREVIOUS YEAR QUESTIONS
1. Explain briefly hot electron transistor
2. List some advantages of multiple quantum well lasers
3. Obtain current voltage characteristics of RTD
4. List the desirable properties of bipolar transistor and explain how this is
achieved in heterojunction bipolar transistors
5. Compare homojunction and DH laser
6. List the advantages of GRINSCH lasers
7. Write notes on NEMS, quantum dot lasers
8. What are CNT transistors
9. With suitable diagram explain the operation of quantum well laser
10. Explain the working of resonant tunnel diode

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11. Explain briefly about single electron transistor, quantum dot LED
12. Compare SET and MOSFET
13. Explain the principle of operation of MODFET and mention its few
advantages
14. Explain in detail device structure and characteristics of resonant
tunneling transistor
15. Describe the working of heterojunction semiconductor laser
16. List the benefits of carbon nanotube FETs
17. Explain quantum confined stark effect with reference to quantum well
optical modulator
18. Draw the schematic representation of the conduction band of a resonant
tunnel diode for a) no voltage applied b)increasing applied voltage.
Explain its I-V characteristics
19. Explain the principle of resonant tunneling. How is it different from Esaki
tunnelling
20. With diagram explain how the threshold current and gain of a multiple
quantum well laser depends on the number of wells

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 21. Explain with reasons the difference in mobility of electrons in MOSFETS
and MODFETS
22. With energy band diagram explain the principle of operation of a
heterojunction BJT
23. Explain the principle of operation and characteristics of a quantum dot
based, single electron transistor
24. With structural details explain the principle of operation of a quantum
dot laser. What are its advantages and disadvantages
25. Explain resonant tunnel effect
26. With the help of energy band diagram, explain the different types of
carrier subband transitions in quantum well infrared photo detectors
27. MODFETs are known as ‘high electron mobility transistor’. Justify with
the help of energy band diagram

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