SUPERLATTICE BAND-STRUCTURE PROBED BY TUNNELING HOT-ELECTRON INJECTION

Tunneling hot-electron injection is used to probe superlattice (SL) minibands and the effect of a magnetic field (B) on a 10-mu-m infrared (IR) detector. Within each miniband, the data agree with the transmission calculation including nonparabolicity, but outside the miniband, the data show that around 15% of electrons can pass through the SL due to impurity scattering. When B is applied, the injection energy of the hot electrons increases slightly. For the IR detector samples, a Gaussian hot-electron distribution gives a better fit to the data than the Lorentzian one, indicating that inhomogeneous broadening is significant in these devices.