@ARTICLE{Makowiec_Marcin_Quantum_2023,
 author={Makowiec, Marcin and Kolek, Andrzej},
 volume={31},
 number={special issue},
 journal={Opto-Electronics Review},
 pages={e144558},
 howpublished={online},
 year={2023},
 publisher={Polish Academy of Sciences (under the auspices of the Committee on Electronics and Telecommunication) and Association of Polish Electrical Engineers in cooperation with Military University of Technology},
 abstract={In recent years, type-II superlattice-based devices have completed the offer of the electronic industry in many areas of applications. Photodetection is one of them, especially in the mid-infrared wavelength range. It is due to the unique feature of a superlattice material, which is a tuneable bandgap. It is also believed that the dark current of superlattice-based photodetectors is strongly suppressed due to the suppression of the band-to-band tunnelling current in a superlattice material. This argument relies, however, on a semi-classical approach that treats superlattice as a bulk material with effective parameters extracted from the kp analysis. In the paper, a superlattice device is analysed on a quantum level: the non-equilibrium Green’s function method is applied to the two-band Hamiltonian of the InAs/GaSb superlattice p-i-n diode. The analysis concentrates on the band-to-band tunnelling with the aim to validate the correctness of a semi-classical description of the phenomenon. The results of calculations reveal that in a superlattice diode, the inter-band tunnelling occurs only for certain values of energy and in-plane momentum, for which electronic and hole sub-bands cross. The transitions occurring for vanishing in-plane momentum produce resonances in the current-voltage characteristics – the feature which was reported in a few experimental observations. This scenario is quite different from that occurring in bulk materials, where there is a range of energy-momentum pairs for which the band-to-band tunnelling takes place, and so current-voltage characteristics are free from any resonances. However, simulations show that, while not justified for a detailed analysis, the semi-classical description can be applied to superlattice-based devices for an ‘order of magnitude’ estimation of the band-to-band tunnelling current.},
 type={Article},
 title={Quantum simulations of band-to-band tunnelling in a type-II broken-gap superlattice diode},
 URL={http://journals.pan.pl/Content/126141/PDF-MASTER/OPELRE_2023_71_Special_Issue_M_Makowiec.pdf},
 doi={10.24425/opelre.2023.144558},
 keywords={type-II superlattice, broken-gap superlattice diode, band-to-band tunnelling, quantum transport, non-equilibrium Green’s function, two-band Hamiltonian},
}