ELECTRON-PHONON SCATTERING RATES IN QUANTUM WIRES

Electron-phonon scattering rates for quantum wires composed of one compound semiconductor material within another are calculated rigorously for arbitrary wire shapes within the dielectric continuum approach for the optical phonons and the effective-mass approximation for the electrons. No approximations are used for the boundary conditions satisfied by the phonons or by the electrons. Detailed results are given for the intrasubband and intersubband scattering rates as functions of the initial electron energy and of wire size for wires of rectangular cross section. An interesting maximum in the intersubband scattering rate as a function of wire size is found. We find that interface phonons give important contributions to the scattering rates, especially for small (less than or similar to 100 angstrom) wire widths or high electron energies. We also give a quantitative appraisal of the rates obtained from simple separable approximations used previously for the phonons.