INDENTED BARRIER RESONANT-TUNNELING RECTIFIERS

This article concerns a novel negative-conductance device consisting o f a series of N laterally indented barriers which exhibits resonant tu nneling under one bias polarity and simple tunneling under the opposit e one, thus acting as a rectifier. Electrons undergo resonant tunnelin g when the bias creates a band profile with N triangular wells which c an each contain a resonant state. From 1 to N the addition of each ind entation can be used to increase the current density and the rectifica tion ratio, calculated at the current-peak bias at resonance, provided that at a given bias all the states in the triangular wells align eac h other with the emitter Fermi energy in order to form a resonance alo ng the structure. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.