Coherent and phonon-assisted tunnelling in asymmetric double barrier resonant tunnelling structures

We present a theory for calculating the phonon-assisted tunnelling current in asymmetric double barrier resonant tunnelling structures (DBRTS), in which all of the phonon modes including the interface modes and the confined bulk-like LO phonons and the conduction band nonparabolicity are considered. An important physical picture about coherent and phonon-assisted tunnelling is given. The coherent tunnelling current can be directly determined by both the width of the resonant level and the peak value of the transmission coefficient at the resonant level. The phonon-assisted tunnelling current mainly comes from electron interaction with higher frequency interface phonons (especially the interface phonons localised at either interface of the left barrier). Phonon-assisted tunnelling makes a significant contribution to the valley current. The subband nonparabolicity strongly influences on electron-phonon scattering and current-to-voltage characteristics. A specially designed asymmetric DBRTS may have an improved performance over the symmetric DBRTS.