ON THE QUANTUM CONFINEMENT EFFECT OF MISSEN ELECTRON AND ELECTRON CHARGE CARRIERS IN A TYPICAL SYNTHETIC SEMICONDUCTING SYSTEM

Ajayi J. O, Akinrinola O and Olawale E.O.

Department of Pure and Applied Physics, Ladoke Akintola

University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria.

E-mail: simpleajayi@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

An investigation on the quantum confinement effect of electron and missen electron, when decoupling has not taken place in a synthetic semiconductor structure of GaAs/AlGaAs has been carried out. We have derived analytical expressions of bound state energies from a careful study of the transcendental equation which reproduce impressively well, the numerical solutions of the corresponding transcendental equation for all confinement sizes and potential barrier without any adjustable parameter. These expressions depend on a unique parameter which contains the barrier height and well width. The investigation reveals that the optical absorption data in conjunction with computed energy level based on non-parabolic effective mass theory yielded the needed information (tunneling, exerted force on the wall just before tunneling, critical layer thickness, misfit dislocations etc) about the quantum confinement effect in the structure. Steeper graphs were obtained due to the large band offset (energy gap difference between the composite materials). Also, confinement energy is inversely proportional to the effective mass whereas, confinement potential depends on the direction of the structure.