A double-barrier-emitter triangular-barrier optoelectronic switch

In this study, a triangular-barrier and a double-barrier structure are combined to form a double-barrier-emitter triangular-barrier optoelectronic switch (DTOS). In the structure center of the triangular barrier, a p-type delta-doped quantum well is inserted to enhance the hole confinement. Owing to the resonant tunneling through the double-barrier structure and avalanche multiplication in the reverse-biased junction, N-shaped and S-shaped negative-differential-resistance (NDR) phenomena occur in the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics under normal and reverse operation modes, respectively. The NDR characteristics show variations from dark to illumination conditions. Temperature effects on the NDRs of the DTOS are also obvious. The illumination and temperature influences on the device characteristics are investigated in this paper.