CURRENT BISTABILITY AND SWITCHING IN WEAKLY COUPLED SUPERLATTICES GAAS ALGAAS/

Current-voltage characteristics of 30 period 390 Angstrom GaAs/110 Ang strom Al0,3Ga0,7As superlattices are studied. Features revealed in mul tistable current branches of the hysteresis loops made it possible to estimate gradual changes in the size and shape of the domain boundary and reconstruct the final shape of the domain boundary. It was conclud ed that a considerable current bistability observed in the investigate d superlattices is due to the domain boundary expansion. Switching bet ween bistable current states in each hysteresis loop is detected. The switching time depends on the direction of the current jump. The switc hing time from a high to low-current slate is about 10(-7) s; the time of the reverse switching to the high-current state is about 10(-6) s. The observed switching is attributed to the shrinkage and expansion o f the domain boundary size. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.