Nano Express
Study of the vertical transport in p-doped superlattices based on group III-V semiconductors
1 Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, R. Dom Manoel de Medeiros s/n, 52171-900 Recife, PE, Brazil
2 Instituto de Física de São Carlos, USP, CP 369, 13560-970, São Carlos, SP, Brazil
3 Department of Physics, Texas State University, 78666 San Marcos, TX, USA
4 Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Cidade Universitária, 50670-901, Recife, PE, Brazil
Nanoscale Research Letters 2011, 6:175 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-6-175
Published: 25 February 2011Abstract
The electrical conductivity σ has been calculated for p-doped GaAs/Al0.3Ga0.7As and cubic GaN/Al0.3Ga0.7N thin superlattices (SLs). The calculations are done within a self-consistent approach
to the 
theory by means of a full six-band Luttinger-Kohn Hamiltonian, together with the
Poisson equation in a plane wave representation, including exchange correlation effects
within the local density approximation. It was also assumed that transport in the
SL occurs through extended minibands states for each carrier, and the conductivity
is calculated at zero temperature and in low-field ohmic limits by the quasi-chemical
Boltzmann kinetic equation. It was shown that the particular minibands structure of
the p-doped SLs leads to a plateau-like behavior in the conductivity as a function of the
donor concentration and/or the Fermi level energy. In addition, it is shown that the
Coulomb and exchange-correlation effects play an important role in these systems,
since they determine the bending potential.
