MINIBAND BLOCH TRANSPORT THROUGH A ONE-DIMENSIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR SUPERLATTICE

The balance-equation theory recently developed for miniband Bloch transport in semiconductor superlattices is extended to systems with a strong lateral confinement. Carrier statistics, electron heating, and realistic scattering mechanisms due to impurities and phonons are included in the force- and energy-balance equations. Impurity- and phonon-limited linear mobilities are investigated as functions of the carrier occupation and temperature. The non-linear behaviour of the drift velocity against electric field for these one-dimensional superlattices, derived from the balance-equation theory, exhibits features different from that of a three-dimensional superlattice, but similar to the predictions of the Esaki-Tsu and Boltzmann theories.