Negative differential resistance in a resonant quantum wire structure

It is shown that the transmission characteristics of a semiconductor split-gate device with a double constriction exhibit resonant behavior similar to that in resonant-tunneling diodes (RTDs). The double constriction is modeled with cascaded quantum waveguides of different widths and analyzed by applying a mode-matching technique to the wave function at the discontinuities. At low temperature, the calculated current-voltage characteristics exhibit a region of negative differential resistance. Current-voltage characteristics are presented for different constriction widths and temperatures exhibiting peak-to-valley ratios of up to 4:1 which persist up to temperatures around 10 K.>