Valley splitting in strained silicon quantum wells

A theory based on localized-orbital approaches is developed to describe the valley splitting observed in silicon quantum wells. The theory is appropriate in the limit of low electron density and relevant for quantum computing architectures. The valley splitting is computed for realistic devices using the quantitative nanoelectronic modeling tool NEMO. A simple, analytically solvable tight-binding model reproduces the behavior of the splitting in the NEMO results and yields much physical insight. The splitting is in general nonzero even in the absence of electric field in contrast to previous works. The splitting in a square well oscillates as a function of S, the number of layers in the quantum well, with a period that is determined by the location of the valley minimum in the Brillouin zone. The envelope of the splitting decays as S−3. The feasibility of observing such oscillations experimentally in Si/SiGe heterostructures is discussed.