Interband tunneling in heterostructure tunnel diodes

A particular type of tunnel diode, incorporating a wideband tunnel barrier, is studied. Simple analytic expressions are developed for estimating the tunneling coefficients to guide and optimize the design of heterostructure interband tunnel devices. The interband tunneling in such heterostructure tunnel diodes is modeled by a two-band Schrodinger equation. For a certain family of InGaAs/InA/GaAs p-n junction tunnel diodes, the interband transmission coefficients are calculated. The estimated peak currents are shown to compare very favorably with experimental results.<
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