Quantum Heterostructures provides a detailed description of the key physical and engineering principles of quantum semiconductor heterostructures. Blending important concepts from physics, materials science, and electrical engineering, it also explains clearly the behavior and operating features of modern microelectronic and optoelectronic devices. The authors begin by outlining the trends that have driven development in this field, most importantly the need for high-performance devices in computer, information, and communications technologies. They then describe the basics of quantum nanoelectronics, including various transport mechanisms. In the latter part of the book, they cover novel microelectronic devices, and optical devices based on quantum heterostructures. The book contains many homework problems and is suitable as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses in electrical engineering, physics, or materials science. It will also be of great interest to those involved in research or development in microelectronic or optoelectronic devices.

Heterostructure and quantum-mechanical devices promise significant improvement in the performance of electronic and optoelectronic integrated circuits (ICs). Though these devices are the subject of a vigorous research effort, the current literature is often either highly technical or narrowly focused. This book presents heterostructure and quantum devices to the nonspecialist, especially electrical engineers working with high-performance semiconductor devices. It focuses on a broad base of technical applications using semiconductor physics theory to develop the next generation of electrical engineering devices. The text covers existing technologies and future possibilities within a common framework of high-performance devices, which will have a more immediate impact on advanced semiconductor physics-particularly quantum effects-and will thus form the basis for longer-term technology development.

Da die Nachfrage nach immer schnelleren und kleineren Halbleiterbauelementen stetig wächst, sind Quanten-Dots und -Pyramiden rasant in den Mittelpunkt der Halbleiterforschung gerückt. Dieses Buch vermittelt einen umfassenden Überblick über den aktuellen Forschungsstand auf diesem Gebiet. Behandelt werden u.a. Fragen, wie Strukturen aufgebaut, wie sie charakterisiert werden und wie sie die Leistungsfähigkeit der Bauelemente bestimmen. (11/98)

The ability to engineer the bandstructure and the wavefunction over length scales previously inaccessible to technology using artificially structured materials and nanolithography has led to a new class of electron semiconductor devices whose operation is controlled by quantum effects. These structures not only represent exciting tools for investigating new quantum phenomena in semiconductors, but also offer exciting opportunities for applications. This book gives the first comprehensive treatment of the physics of quantum electron devices. This interdisciplinary field, at the junction between material science, physics and technology, has witnessed an explosive growth in recent years. This volume presents a detailed coverage of the physics of the underlying phenomena, and their device and circuit applications, together with fabrication and growth technology.

Quantum size effects are becoming increasingly important in microelectronics, as the dimensions of the structures shrink laterally towards 100 nm and vertically towards 10 nm. Advanced device concepts will exploit these effects for integrated circuits with novel or improved properties. Keeping in mind the trend towards systems on chip, this book deals with silicon-based quantum devices and focuses on room-temperature operation. The basic physical principles, materials, technological aspects, and fundamental device operation are discussed in an interdisciplinary manner. It is shown that silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterostructure devices will play a key role in realizing silicon-based quantum electronics.

In the last couple of decades, high-performance electronic and optoelectronic devices based on semiconductor heterostructures have been required to obtain increasingly strict and well-defined performances, needing a detailed control, at the atomic level, of the structural composition of the buried interfaces. This goal has been achieved by an improvement of the epitaxial growth techniques and by the parallel use of increasingly sophisticated characterization techniques and of refined theoretical models based on ab initio approaches. This book deals with description of both characterization techniques and theoretical models needed to understand and predict the structural and electronic properties of semiconductor heterostructures and nanostructures. - Comprehensive collection of the most powerful characterization techniques for semiconductor heterostructures and nanostructures - Most of the chapters are authored by scientists that are among the top 10 worldwide in publication ranking of the specific field - Each chapter starts with a didactic introduction on the technique - The second part of each chapter deals with a selection of top examples highlighting the power of the specific technique to analyze the properties of semiconductors

The past few decades of research and development in solid-state semicon ductor physics and electronics have witnessed a rapid growth in the drive to exploit quantum mechanics in the design and function of semiconductor devices. This has been fueled for instance by the remarkable advances in our ability to fabricate nanostructures such as quantum wells, quantum wires and quantum dots. Despite this contemporary focus on semiconductor "quantum devices," a principal quantum mechanical aspect of the electron - its spin has it accounts for an added quan largely been ignored (except in as much as tum mechanical degeneracy). In recent years, however, a new paradigm of electronics based on the spin degree of freedom of the electron has begun to emerge. This field of semiconductor "spintronics" (spin transport electron ics or spin-based electronics) places electron spin rather than charge at the very center of interest. The underlying basis for this new electronics is the intimate connection between the charge and spin degrees of freedom of the electron via the Pauli principle. A crucial implication of this relationship is that spin effects can often be accessed through the orbital properties of the electron in the solid state. Examples for this are optical measurements of the spin state based on the Faraday effect and spin-dependent transport measure ments such as giant magneto-resistance (GMR). In this manner, information can be encoded in not only the electron's charge but also in its spin state, i. e.