Type-II Superlattice Hole Effective Masses

While type-II superlattices (T2SL) can offer beneficial properties such as tunneling suppression [1] and Auger reduction [2] for infrared detectors, they also have potential disadvantages of weaker absorption coefficient due to spatial separation of electron and hole wave functions [3] and reduced hole mobility due to large growth direction hole effective mass. We report calculated hole effective masses for bulk InAsSb, InAs/GaSb T2SL, and InAs/InAsSb T2SL, and show that the thermally averages LWIR T2SL hole conductivity effective masses along the growth direction can be orders of magnitude smaller than the corresponding band-edge effective masses.

References

[1] D. L. Smith and C. Mailhiot, J. Appl. Phys. 62, 2545 (1987).

[2] C. H. Grein, P. M. Young, and H. Ehrenreich, Appl. Phys. Lett. 61, 2905 (1992).

[3] P.C. Klipstein, Y. Livneh, A. Glozman, S. Grossman, O. Klin, N. Snapi, and E. Weiss, J. Electronic Materials 43, 2984 (2014).