Lateral current density fronts in asymmetric double-barrier resonant-tunneling structures

Abstract

We present a theoretical analysis and numerical simulations of lateral current density fronts in bistable resonant-tunneling diodes with Z-shaped current-voltage characteristics. The bistability is due to the charge accumulation in the quantum well of the double-barrier structure. We focus on asymmetric structures in the regime of sequential incoherent tunneling and study the dependence of the bistability range, the front velocity and the front width on the structure parameters. We propose a sectional design of a structure that is suitable for experimental observation of front propagation and discuss potential problems of such measurements in view of our theoretical findings. We point out the possibility to use sectional resonant-tunneling structures as controllable three-terminal switches.

to appear in J.Appl.Phys

References in corpus (2)

• Tunable Pinning of Burst-Waves in Extended Systems with Discrete Sources
• Backward diode composed of a metallic and semiconducting nanotube

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Symmetry-breaking transitions in networks of nonlinear circuit elements
• Time--delay autosynchronization of the spatio-temporal dynamics in resonant tunneling diodes
• Theory of traveling filaments in bistable semiconductor structures
• Scaling properties of noise-induced switching in a bistable tunnel diode circuit
• On stochastic switching of bistable resonant-tunneling structures via nucleation