INELASTIC RESONANT-TUNNELING

A general expression for the resonant contribution to a tunneling curr ent has been obtained and analyzed in the tunneling Hamiltonian approx imation. Two types of resonant tunneling structures are considered: st ructures with a random impurity distribution and double-barrier struct ures, where the resonant level results from size quantization. The eff ect of temperature on the current-voltage curves of tunneling structur es is discussed. The study of the effect of potential barrier profile on the d(2)I/dV(2) line shape is of interest for experiments in inelas tic tunneling spectroscopy. Various experimental situations where the inelastic component of the tunneling current can become comparable to the elastic one are discussed. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.