Reanalysis of energy band structure in the type-II quantum wells

Abstract

Band structure analysis holds significant importance for understanding the optoelectronic characteristics of semiconductor structures and exploring their potential applications in practice. For quantum well structures, the energy of carriers in the well splits into discrete energy levels due to the confinement of barriers in the growth direction. However, the discrete energy levels obtained at a fixed wave vector cannot accurately reflect the actual energy band structure. In this work, the band structure of the type-II quantum wells is reanalyzed. When the wave vectors of the entire Brillouin region (corresponding to the growth direction) are taken into account, the quantized energy levels of the carriers in the well are replaced by subbands with certain energy distributions. This new understanding of the energy bands of low-dimensional structures not only helps us to have a deeper cognition of the structure, but also may overturn many viewpoints in traditional band theories and serve as supplementary to the band theory of low-dimensional systems.