Mlf. Lerch et al., CHARGE ACCUMULATION OVER A REGION OF ELECTRICAL MULTISTABILITY IN A DOUBLE-BARRIER STRUCTURE, Surface science, 362(1-3), 1996, pp. 226-230
When a double barrier semiconductor structure is biased near a tunneli
ng resonance, charge can accumulate in the central quantum well. We re
port photoluminescence measurements of the 2D charge density over the
full range of a tunneling resonance with emphasis on the region of mul
tistability, An active load line technique was used to bias the device
into this region, which is otherwise inaccessible. The charge density
versus current graph shows hysteresis and the plasmon excitation, whi
ch is a strong feature in the current-voltage characteristic, appears
only weakly. Both these results are consistent with a model calculatio
n based on charge conservation and the electron-electron interaction.