Electronic properties of p-Type ?-doped GaAs structure under electric field

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the electronic properties of p-type ?-doped GaAs inserted into a quantum well under the electric field, at T = 0K.We will investigate the influence of the electric field on the ?-doping concentration for a uniform distribution. The depth of confining potential, the density profile, the Fermi level, the subband energies and the subband populations calculate by solving the Schrodinger and Poisson equations self consistently. It is found that the changes of the electronic properties are quite sensitive to the applied electric field and the doping concentration. As different from single n-type ?-doped structure, we see a replace between the ground light-hole (lh1) subband and the first excited heavy-hole (hh2) subband whenever the external electric field reaches a critical value. We find the abrupt changing of the subband energies and the subband populations whenever the applied electric field reaches a certain value. Also, it is found that the heavy-hole subbands contain many more energy states than the light-hole ones, the population of the heavy-hole levels represent approximately 91% of all the carriers. © 2008 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd.