Numerical study of Bloch electron dynamics in wide band-gap semiconductors

• In this paper, we are using numerical calculations to demonstrate the importance of band to band tunneling in wide band-gap semiconductors. We have considered 4H-SiC, 3C-SiC and wurtzite GaN as prototype semiconductors in the demonstration. Wide band-gap semiconductors allow device operation under very high-applied electric fields, where significant band to band tunneling is expected to occur. Hexagonal wide band-gap semiconductors have a valence band structure with a large number of bands separated by rather small energies. Our calculation shows that this leads to a very significant band to band tunneling even at relatively low electric fields. In cubic wide band-gap semiconductors the tunneling is much less pronounced. However, at the valence band maximum the band separations are small enough to allow significant band to band tunneling. The spin-orbit interaction tends to bend the band near the maximum creating degradation from a parabolic curvature. This bending is found to significantly influence the band to band tunneling process. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

GaN

Interband tunneling

SiC

Spin-orbit splitting

TECHNOLOGY

TEKNIKVETENSKAP

Electrical engineering, electronics and photonics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)