Development of a simple two-step lithography fabrication process for resonant tunneling diode using air-bridge technology

This article reports on the development of a simple two-step lithography process for double barrier quantum well(DBQW)InGaAs/AlAs resonant tunneling diode(RTD)on a semi-insulating indium phosphide(InP)substrate using an air-bridge technology.This approach minimizes processing steps,and therefore the processing time as well as the required resources.It is particularly suited for material qualification of new epitaxial layer designs.A DC performance comparison between the proposed process and the conventional process shows approximately the same results.We expect that this novel technique will aid in the recent and continuing rapid advances in RTD technology.

GaAs-based resonant tunneling diode:Device aspects from design,manufacturing,characterization and applications

This review article discusses the development of gallium arsenide(GaAs)-based resonant tunneling diodes(RTD)since the 1970s.To the best of my knowledge,this article is the first review of GaAs RTD technology which covers different epitaxialstructure design,fabrication techniques,and characterizations for various application areas.It is expected that the details presented here will help the readers to gain a perspective on the previous accomplishments,as well as have an outlook on the current trends and future developments in GaAs RTD research.

Macroscopic resonant tunneling in an rf-SQUID flux qubit

We have observed the macroscopic resonant tunneling of magnetic flux between macroscopically distinct quantum states in a superconducting flux qubit. The dependences of the macroscopic resonant tunneling on the barrier height of the potential well, the flux bias and the initial state are investigated. Detailed measurements of the tunneling rate as a function of the flux bias reveal the feature of the quantum noise in the superconducting flux qubit.

Resonant tunneling and quantum fluctuation in a driven triple-well system

The influence of parameters such as the strength and frequency of a periodic driving force on the tunneling dynamics is investigated in a symmetric triple-well potential. It is shown that for some special values of the parameters, tunneling could be enhanced considerably or suppressed completely. Quantum fluctuation during the tunneling is discussed as well and the numerical results are presented and analysed by virtue of Floquet formalism.

Solid-state resonant tunneling thermoelectric refrigeration in the cylindrical double-barrier nanostructure

A solid-state thermoelectric refrigerator with a cylindrical InP/InAs/InP double-barrier heterostructure is proposed. Based on the ballistic electron transport and the asymmetrical transmission, we derive the expressions of the performance parameters of this refrigerator. The cooling rate rather than the coefficient of performance is affected by the area of the inner cylinder. Then through the numerical simulation, a triangular cooling rate region is found with respect to the chemical potential and bias voltage; further, that it is because of the small full width at half maximum of the transmission resonance and the linear relationship between the energy position of resonance and the bias voltage. These tunable results might supply some guide to the cooling in tiny components or devices.

Characteristics of cylindrical surrounding-gate GaAs_xSb_(1-x)/In_yGa_(1-y)As heterojunction tunneling field-effect transistors

A Ⅲ-Ⅴ heterojunction tunneling field-effect transistor(TFET) can enhance the on-state current effectively,and GaAsSb/InGaAs heterojunction exhibits better performance with the adjustable band alignment by modulating the alloy composition.In this paper,the performance of the cylindrical surrounding-gate GaAsSb/InGaAs heterojunction TFET with gate-drain underlap is investigated by numerical simulation.We validate that reducing drain doping concentration and increasing gate-drain underlap could be effective ways to reduce the off-state current and subthreshold swing(SS),while increasing source doping concentration and adjusting the composition of GaAsSbInGaAs can improve the on-state current.In addition,the resonant TFET based on GaAsSb/InGaAs is also studied,and the result shows that the minimum and average of SS reach 11 mV/decade and 20 mV/decade for five decades of drain current,respectively,and is much superior to the conventional TFET.

Comparison of resonant tunneling diodes grown on freestanding GaN substrates and sapphire substrates by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy

AlN/GaN resonant tunneling diodes(RTDs)were grown separately on freestanding Ga N(FS-GaN)substrates and sapphire substrates by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy(PA-MBE).Room temperature negative differential resistance(NDR)was obtained under forward bias for the RTDs grown on FS-GaN substrates,with the peak current densities(Jp)of 175-700 kA/cm^(2)and peak-to-valley current ratios(PVCRs)of 1.01-1.21.Two resonant peaks were also observed for some RTDs at room temperature.The effects of two types of substrates on epitaxy quality and device performance of GaN-based RTDs were firstly investigated systematically,showing that lower dislocation densities,flatter surface morphology,and steeper heterogeneous interfaces were the key factors to achieving NDR for RTDs.

Resonant tunneling through double-barrier structures on graphene

Quantum resonant tunneling behaviors of double-barrier structures on graphene are investigated under the tightbinding approximation. The Klein tunneling and resonant tunneling are demonstrated for the quasiparticles with energy close to the Dirac points. The Klein tunneling vanishes by increasing the height of the potential barriers to more than 300 meV. The Dirac transport properties continuously change to the Schro¨dinger ones. It is found that the peaks of resonant tunneling approximate to the eigen-levels of graphene nanoribbons under appropriate boundary conditions. A comparison between the zigzag- and armchair-edge barriers is given.

Piezoelectric polarization and quantum size effects on the vertical transport in AlGaN/GaN resonant tunneling diodes

In this work,the electronic properties of resonant tunneling diodes（RTDs） based on GaN-AlxGa（1-x）N double barriers are investigated by using the non-equilibrium Green functions formalism（NEG）.These materials each present a wide conduction band discontinuity and a strong internal piezoelectric field,which greatly affect the electronic transport properties.The electronic density,the transmission coefficient,and the current–voltage characteristics are computed with considering the spontaneous and piezoelectric polarizations.The influence of the quantum size on the transmission coefficient is analyzed by varying GaN quantum well thickness,AlxGa1-xN width,and the aluminum concentration xAl.The results show that the transmission coefficient more strongly depends on the thickness of the quantum well than the barrier;it exhibits a series of resonant peaks and valleys as the quantum well width increases.In addition,it is found that the negative differential resistance（NDR） in the current–voltage（I–V） characteristic strongly depends on aluminum concentration xAl.It is shown that the peak-to-valley ratio（PVR） increases with xAlvalue decreasing.These findings open the door for developing vertical transport nitrides-based ISB devices such as THz lasers and detectors.

High-fidelity resonant tunneling passage in three-waveguide system

An N-stage three-waveguide system is proposed to improve the robustness and the fidelity of the resonant tunneling passage.The analytic solutions to the tunneling dynamics at the output are derived.When the number of subsystems increases,tunneling efficiency approaches to 100%in a large range and resonant tunneling is robust against variations in the phase mismatch and peak tunneling rate.

Macroscopic resonant tunneling in an rf-SQUID flux qubit under a single-cycle sinusoidal driving

We experimentally demonstrate the observation of macroscopic resonant tunneling（MRT） phenomenon of the macroscopic distinct flux states in a radio frequency superconducting quantum interference device（rf-SQUID） under a singlecycle sinusoidal driving.The population of the qubit exhibits interference patterns corresponding to resonant tunneling peaks between states in the adjacent potential wells.The dynamics of the qubit depends significantly on the amplitude,frequency,and initial phase of the driving signal.We do the numerical simulations considering the intra-well and interwell relaxation mechanism,which agree well with the experimental results.This approach provides an effective way to manipulate the qubit population by adjusting the parameters of the external driving field.

Spin injection in a ferromagnet/resonant tunneling diode heterostructure

The spin transport property of a ferromagnet （FM）/insulator （Ⅰ）/resonant tunneling diode （RTD） heterostructure was studied. The transmission coefficient and spin polarization in a multilayered heterostructure was calculated by a Schrdinger wave equation. An Airy function formalism approach was used to solve this equation. Based on the transfer matrix approach,the transmittivity of the structure was determined as a function of the Feimi energy and other parameters. The result shows that the spin polarization induced by the structure oscillates with the increasing Fermi energy of the FM layer. While the thickness of the RTD is reduced,the resonant peaks become broad. In the heterostructure,the spin polarization reaches as high as 40% and can be easily controlled by the external bias voltage.

Quantum Coupling Effect between Quantum Dot and Quantum Well in a Resonant Tunneling Photon-Number-Resolving Detector

Excited states of lnAs quantum dots （QDs） can be energetically coupled with the confined level of OaAs quantum wells （QWs） in a thin-barrier resonant tunneling diode （RTD）. Single charge variation in the coupled QD can effectively switch on/off the resonant tunneling current passing through RTD, not only for emcient single-photon detection but also for photon-number-resolving detection. We present the study of the Q,D-QW coupling effect in the quantum dot coupled resonant tunneling diode （QD-cRTD） and figure out important factors for further improving the detector performance.

Spin resonance transport properties of a single Au atom in S–Au–S junction and Au–Au–Au junction

The spin transport properties of S–Au–S junction and Au–Au–Au junction between Au nanowires are investigated with density functional theory and the non-equilibrium Green＇s function. We mainly focus on the spin resonance transport properties of the center Au atom. The breaking of chemical bonds between anchor atoms and center Au atom significantly influences their spin transmission characteristics. We find the 0.8 eV orbital energy shift between anchor S atoms and the center Au atom can well protect the spin state stored in the S–Au–S junction and efficiently extract its spin state to the current by spin resonance mechanism, while the spin interaction of itinerant electrons and the valence electron of the center Au atom in the Au–Au–Au junction can extract the current spin information into the center Au atom. Fermi energy drift and bias-dependent spin filtering properties of the Au–Au–Au junction may transform information between distance, bias,and electron spin. Those unique properties make them potential candidates for a logical nanocircuit.

Generation and Shaping of Soliton-Like Pulses along Resonant Tunneling Diodes NMOS Varactors Lattice

The characteristics of N-type accumulation-mode MOS (NMOS) varactors line periodically loaded with resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) are used for soliton-like pulses generation and shaping. The problem of wide pulse breaking up into multiple pulses rather than a single is solved. Applying perturbative analysis, we show that the dynamics of the nonlinear transmission line (NLTL) is reduced to expanded Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. Moreover, numerical integration of nonlinear differential and difference equations that result from the mathematical analysis of the line is discussed. As results, NLTL can simultaneously sharpen both leading and trailing of pulse edges and one could obtain a rising and sharpening step pulse.

A novel micro-accelerometer with adjustable sensitivity based on resonant tunnelling diodes

Resonant tunnelling diodes （RTDs） have negative differential resistance effect, and the current-voltage characteristics change as a function of external stress, which is regarded as mesc-piezoresistance effect of RTDs. In this paper, a novel micro-accelerometer based on AlAs/GaAs/In0.1Ga0.9As/GaAs/AlAs RTDs is designed and fabricated to be a four-beam-mass structure, and an RTD-Wheatstone bridge measurement system is established to test the basic properties of this novel accelerometer. According to the experimental results, the sensitivity of the RTD based micro-accelerometer is adjustable within a range of 3 orders when the bias voltage of the sensor changes. The largest sensitivity of this RTD based miero-accelerometer is 560.2025 mV/g which is about 10 times larger than that of silicon based micro piezoresistive accelerometer, while the smallest one is 1.49135 mV/g.

Resonant tunnelling single-barrier of electrons in multi-step heterostructures

We have studied the quantum transport of electrons in a three-step single-barrier A1GaAs heterostructure under electric field. Using the quantum transmitting boundary method and Tsu-Esaki approach, we have calculated the transmission coefficient and current-voltage characteristic. The difference of the effective mass among the three barriers is taken into account. Effects of the barrier width on transmission coefficient and peak-to-valley current ratios are examined. The largest peak-to-valley current ratio is obtained when the ratio of widths of the left, middle, and right barrier is fixed at 4：2：1. The calculated results may be helpful for designing devices based on three-step barrier heterostructures.

Influence of spacer layer thickness on the current-voltage characteristics of pseudomorphic AlAs/In_(0.53)Ga_(0.47)As/InAs resonant tunnelling diodes

This paper investigates the dependence of current voltage characteristics of AlAs/In0.53Ga0.47As/InAs resonant tunnelling diodes （RTDs） on spacer layer thickness. It finds that the peak and the valley current density J in the negative differential resistance （NDR） region depends strongly on the thickness of the spacer layer. The measured peak to valley current ratio of RTDs studied here is shown to improve while the current density through RTDs decreases with increasing spacer layer thickness below a critical value.

Nanoelectronic devices resonant tunnelling diodes grown on InP substrates by molecular beam epitaxy with peak to valley current ratio of 17 at room temperature

This paper reports that InAs/In0.53Ga0.47As/AlAs resonant tunnelling diodes have been grown on InP substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Peak to valley current ratio of these devices is 17 at 300K. A peak current density of 3kA/cm^2 has been obtained for diodes with AlAs barriers of ten monolayers, and an Ino.53Ga0.47As well of eight monolayers with four monolayers of InAs insert layer. The effects of growth interruption for smoothing potential barrier interfaces have been investigated by high resolution transmission electron microscope.

Electron transport in electrically biased inverse parabolic double-barrier structure

A theoretical study of resonant tunneling is carried out for an inverse parabolic double-barrier structure subjected to an external electric field. Tunneling transmission coefficient and density of states are analyzed by using the non-equilibrium Green＇s function approach based on the finite difference method. It is found that the resonant peak of the transmission coefficient, being unity for a symmetrical case, reduces under the applied electric field and depends strongly on the variation of the structure parameters.