GIANT OPTICAL BISTABLE BEHAVIOR USING TRIPLE-BARRIER RESONANT-TUNNELING LIGHT-EMITTING-DIODES

By achieving electrostatic feedback due to hole accumulation in an asy mmetric triple-barrier resonant tunneling light-emitting diode, invert ed bistability is obtained in the current-voltage characteristics. In the low current state, the resonant electron current is suppressed, re sulting in the absence of quantum-well light emission. When switching to the high current state, the sudden increase in electron population causes a steplike increase in luminescence which yields an optical on- off ratio larger than 10(4):1. This improvement by a least a factor of 1000 with respect to the existing double-barrier resonant tunneling l ight-emitting diodes makes the new triple-barrier structure drasticall y more appealing for bistable switching applications.