Comment on “Photoconductivity mechanism of quantum well infrared photodetectors under localized photoexcitation” [Appl. Phys. Lett. <b>73</b>, 3432 (1998)]

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In a recent letter, Ershov 1 considered an artificial situation of photoexcitation of only one quantum well ~QW! in a multiple quantum well infrared photodetector ~QWIP! consisting of identical QWs and barriers. Using the driftdiffusion ~DD! model of electron transport ~see, for example, Refs. 2‐4!, the author calculated the incremental electron sheet concentrations in adjacent QWs caused by localized photoexcitation of a single QW and predicted complex charge and electric-field distributions in the vicinity of the excited QW. The DD model was good for overall assessment of semiconductor devices ~in particular, QWIPs! but has very limited accuracy as it ignores many essential effects and the values of parameters incorporated into the DD models ~mobility, diffusion coefficient, capture rate, etc.! and their dependences on electric field are roughly known. 2‐5 From our point of view, the result of Ref. 1 can be interpreted as an artifact due to the following reasons: ~1! Ershov’s model does not take into account unavoidable fluctuations which are stronger than the effects predicted; and ~2! the model does not take into account the tunneling between QWs which is important for QWIPs with the parameters under consideration.

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Details 詳細情報について

  • CRID
    1872835442804972288
  • DOI
    10.1063/1.126850
  • ISSN
    10773118
    00036951
  • Data Source
    • OpenAIRE

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