Ballistic Electron Emission Spectroscopy Study of Transport through SemiconductorQuantum Wells and Quantum Dots

摘要

This report summarizes the development and use of Ballistic Electron EmissionMicroscopy (BEEM) for nondestructive, local characterization of semiconductor heterostructures. The technique has been applied for measuring heterojunction band offsets, for studying band structure effects in electron tunneling through double barrier resonant tunneling structures, and for imaging current flow through buried mesoscopic structures such as quantum dots (approx. 10nm in size) and misfit dislocations 80nm below the surface. Monte Carlo simulations of the transport have also been performed. The results suggest that BEEM is a powerful new low energy electron microscopy for materials physics study on the nm scale.