Under certain conditions electrons in a semiconductor become much hotter than the surrounding crystal lattice. When this happens, Ohm's Law breaks down: current no longer increases linearly with voltage and may even decrease. Hot electrons have long been a challenging problem in condensed matter physics and remain important in semiconductor research. Recent advances in technology have led to semiconductors with submicron dimensions, where electrons can be confined to two (quantum well), one (quantum wire), or zero (quantum dot) dimensions. In these devices small voltages heat electrons...
Under certain conditions electrons in a semiconductor become much hotter than the surrounding crystal lattice. When this happens, Ohm's Law breaks dow...
Instabilities associated with hot electrons in semiconductors have been investigated from the beginning of transistor physics in the 194Os. The study of NDR and impact ionization in bulk material led to devices like the Gunn diode and the avalanche-photo-diode. In layered semiconductors domain formation in HEMTs can lead to excess gate leakage and to excess noise. The studies of hot electron transport parallel to the layers in heterostructures, single and multiple, have shown abundant evidence of electrical instability and there has been no shortage of suggestions concerning novel NDR...
Instabilities associated with hot electrons in semiconductors have been investigated from the beginning of transistor physics in the 194Os. The study ...
