Electronic, Transport and Optical Properties of Broken-Gap Semiconductor Quantum Well Structures

Supervisor

Dr. Wen Xu Phone: 6125 3063

We know that in conventional condensed matter materials the conduction band is always higher than the vanlence band. However, it has been realised recently that in InAs/GaSb-based quantum well systems, the top of the vanlence-band in the GaSb layer can be significantly higher than the bottom of the conduction-band in the InAs layer. Thus, advanced electronic and optical devices (eg, high-mobility and high-frequency transistors, terahertz laser generators and photon detectors, etc.) can be realised on the basis of these broken-gap semiconductor structures. In this project, the electronic, transport and optical properties of these novel systems will be studied theoretically in collaboration with an experimental group from the US Army Research Laboratory.