Abstract

Tunneling is one of the basic quantum mechanical phenomena which play a key role in many ultra thin semiconductor devices. Besides their potential for applications, double barrier heterostructures are also interesting for the understanding of tunneling-based transport processes (1) and their dynamics. Time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) has been used to determine the tunneling escape rate of electrons from a single quantum well through a thin barrier into a continuum (2) and to determine the electric field dependance of this tunneling rate (3). The charge accumulation in the quantum well can be estimated using magnetotunneling (4) or steady-state photoluminescence (5) as recently demonstrated.

© 1989 Optical Society of America