SEMICLASSICAL DESCRIPTION OF ELECTRON-TRANSPORT IN SEMICONDUCTOR QUANTUM-WELL DEVICES

Carrier drift, diffusion, and thermionic emission for classical semico nductor devices (p-n junctions, heterostructures, etc.) is most easily described using expressions derived from a Boltzmann transport equati on point of view. This point of view is not particularly applicable to quantum-well transport. It is shown here that by postulating a region of phase space that is forbidden to the mobile carriers and then alte ring the scattering probability so that no particles are scattered to the forbidden region, a Boltzmann-equation-based formalism emerges tha t can describe the mobile-carrier component of quantum-well transport.